Agfa HealthCare has formed a global strategic relationship with Orion Health that aims to image-enable electronic health records (EHR), healthcare information exchanges (HIE), and regional-enabled hospital information systems (HIS), clinical information systems (CIS), and electronic patient records (EPR).
Under the partnership, images from Agfa's Imaging Clinical Information Services (ICIS) platform can now be integrated into a shared single-patient view via Orion Health's Clinical Portal, according to the vendors. Imaging data from multiple disciplines can now be presented in context with other patient data and documents from multiple systems across a hospital network or health region, Agfa and Orion said.
Agfa will offer Orion's integrated EHR/HIE package as part of its enterprise imaging offering, while Orion will also market Agfa's ICIS platform, which includes Agfa's Impax Data Center and Xero Web-based image viewer. Patients and their families and personal care support teams will also be able to access a unified view of their electronic records, including their entire longitudinal imaging records, via Orion Health's Patient Portal.
Agfa and Orion plan to initially concentrate their joint offering on selected geographies in developed countries. The focus in the U.S. and Canada will be on adding clinical depth into ICIS, while the focus in France, Belgium, and the U.K. will be on adding regional collaboration capabilities into Agfa's ORBIS HIS/CIS/EPR software and its IT imaging offerings, according to the firms.
Alberta Health Services in Alberta, Canada, is one of the first joint customers for Agfa and Orion. The installation integrates 123 hospitals and 85 clinics with 37,000 clinical users providing healthcare to 3.8 million Albertans, Agfa said.
