Agfa Healthcare

Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, one of the nation’s top pediatric medical centers, provides services in more than 40 specialties, including nephrology, oncology, cardiology, heart surgery, orthopaedics, neurology and neurosurgery.  Located in Kansas City, Missouri, the state-of-the-art 335-bed facility and 600-plus pediatricians and researchers are actively involved in clinical care, pediatric research and education. In addition to its primary facility, Children’s Mercy serves the community and the greater Midwest with outpatient facilities and outreach clinics throughout the city, county and surrounding communities. 

In 2012, Children’s Mercy purchased new Computed Radiography equipment from Agfa HealthCare. The Agfa HealthCare DX-G CR solution has allowed Children’s Mercy to reduce radiation dose by 57 percent compared to its previous CR system.  “Premature infants are so much more susceptible to the risks of radiation. The DX-G with DirectriX CsBr plates allows us to give them the care they require while lowering the corresponding risk of radiation induced cancer,” says James C. Brown, M.D., director of radiology outreach; associate professor of radiology, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, “To reduce radiation dose by almost 60 percent and still have the same image quality is a significant step forward for Children’s Mercy and our neonatal patients.” 

If you would have asked radiologists about the future of radiology information systems (RIS) five to 10 years ago, there is a good chance that they would have told you that RIS was a dying technology. Because RIS systems were merging with other technological platforms, many radiologists did not expect the systems to be around. But now many physicians are trying to meet the Stage 2 meaningful use (MU) criteria to take advantage of Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments and prepare themselves to be in compliance when the criteria become requirements. RIS and picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) are experiencing a technological rebirth that will usher the next generation of these products smoothly into 2013. 

Agfa HealthCare has introduced its global remote incident prevention (GRIP) services to provide state-of-the-art electronic monitoring of all IMPAX picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) worldwide, as well as linked devices from other suppliers. GRIP’s ultimate goal is to prevent unsettling downtime surprises in the healthcare environment.

According to a new market research report "Breast Imaging Technologies Market (Digital Mammography,3D Breast Tomosynthesis, Breast MRI, Breast Ultrasound, Molecular Breast Imaging, Optical Imaging, PET/CT/PEM Modalities) Technology and Market Analysis & Global Forecasts to 2017" is an attempt to showcase the market impact of current and emerging breast imaging technologies having excellent growth potential in the coming five years. The technologies profiled in the report are segmented into Ionizing breast imaging modalities and Non-Ionizing breast imaging technologies on basis of radiation. Ionizing breast imaging modalities include Mammography, 3D Breast Tomosynthesis, Cone beam Computed Tomography (CBCT), Positron Emission Mammography (PEM), Molecular Breast Imaging (MBI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Breast Specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI). The various Non-ionizing modalities for breast screening covered in the report are Breast MRI, Optical Imaging, Breast thermography and Breast Ultrasound.

Agfa HealthCare has launched the IMPAX Data Center (IDC) 3.0. This new version of Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise medical imaging repository, also called a vendor neutral archive (VNA), is PACS- and storage vendor-agnostic.