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Agfa HealthCare expanded its agreement with the Basque Healthcare Service’s Osakidetza facilities in Spain to extend its IMPAX PACS to a further 15 sites

Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions, announced that it has expanded its agreement with the Basque Healthcare Service’s Osakidetza facilities in Spain to extend its IMPAX Picture and Archiving and Communications System ( PACS ) to a further 15 sites, in addition to the 28 facilities it currently serves. To enable all facilities to easily access and share diagnostic images and related data, Osakidetza will also install Agfa HealthCare’s IMPAX Data Center, a solution which manages diagnostic image access and distribution across the enterprise.

Osakidetza, an organization belonging to the Basque Healthcare Department of the Basque Government, manages 18 hospitals, over 300 primary care centers, employs around 5.300 healthcare professionals and a staff of 25.000. Combined they support a population over 2 million. It is the region's leading care provider. Agfa HealthCare was originally selected in late 2007 to install its IMPAX 6 PACS, a centralized RIS, 59 Computed Radiography solutions, and 52 diagnostic imaging printers across 5 Hospitalsand 23 Primary Care Centers in the Basque Country, northernSpain.

The expansion of IMPAX to an additional 15 small and medium sites will account for a 20% growth in Osakidetza's total annual digital studies. Today over 75% of its Radiologists are making active use of IMPAX, and this number is expected to grow in the near future. Central to enabling the availability and sharing of diagnostic images will be the company's IMPAXDataCenter, which creates a longitudinal patient imaging record by integrating and linking multi-facility, multi-departmental, and multi-specialty imaging data.IMPAXDataCenter is a massively scalable imaging management solution designed to capture, manage, archive, and visualize multi-facility, multi-departmental, and multi-specialty imaging and image related patient information. The IMPAXDataCenter's use will, over time, be expanded across the region to form the backbone for the regional image repository.

"During lasttwo years,Osakidetza has dramatically improved the quality of its Radiology Systems", states Martín Begoña, CIO at Osakidetza. "With the support from Agfa HealthCare and its leading solutions, we will have 43 sites running on PACS and a data center to enable us to function as an integrated, united organization. It is a major achievement."

"Osakidetza is a primary example of how regional care is increasingly staking its claim in Europe" states Hans Vandewyngaerde, Vice President Europe at Agfa HealthCare, "The integration of Osakidetza's sites, supported by a data center to enable the efficient sharing of images is a cornerstone to the region's strategy to improve the overall delivery of care to its population. It is also a primary example of an increasingly growing and successful regional care approach inEurope."

"We have worked extensively with the Basque organization to ensure that the single and structure workflow we have provided through our solutions was not only technically sound, but was built on the real needs of the clinicians that use them, every day" adds Sergio Irayzoz Del Castillo, responsible for Healthcare IT at Agfa HealthCare inSpain. "Combined, these two requirements enable an improved efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of care."

Source: Agfa Healthcare