Royal Philips announced today that it is partnering with The University of Colorado Health (UCHealth) to consolidate and standardize its EHR, PACS and voice recognition systems onto specialized platforms for radiology and cardiology.

UCHealth has five hospitals in Colorado and over 100 ambulatory locations across Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska.

With its Philips IntelliSpace PACS for radiology and Xcelera for cardiology, UCHealth projects that it will save $11.1 million over the course of five years due to less software and associated maintenance costs — $6.5 million in radiology and $4.6 million in cardiology.

The health system is also expecting better workflow efficiencies, immediate access to images and a flexible structure that enables seamless connection with other technologies.

"From a health system perspective, any patient should be able to get identical, high quality, standardized care any place in the system – and PACS is part of that," Dr. Peter Sachs of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Standardizing imaging protocols, workflow, and the structure and content of reports is essential, as is making sure clinicians can see prior studies and historical records."

Six million radiology images and 30,000 cardiology studies from UCHealth have already been added onto Philips IntelliSpace PACS and Xcelera. The radiologists and cardiologists are able to view older images and new images on one patient timelines, regardless of whether they were captured within the UCHealth system.

UCHealth also has plans to implement Philips IntelliSpace Cardiovascular, which provides timelines of the patients’ cardiovascular care continuum. It also had plans to include visible light images in its IntelliSpace PACS, mobility initiatives and advanced visualization through the IntelliSpace Portal.

Philips will be showcasing IntelliSpace PACS along with the rest of its portfolio of integrated radiology solutions at the 2015 Radiological Society of North America Annual Meeting in Chicago.