Mortsel/Belgium -- Recent contracts signed in France confirm Agfa's ORBIS as the leading solution in Europe for increasing efficiency in hospital organizations and quality of patient care. In a public tender Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU), the university hospital center of Toulouse, France, has chosen Agfa HealthCare to implement ORBIS, Agfas leading clinical and administrative information system. The installation is scheduled to be concluded by 2011 and will affect some 10,000 users.

The University Hospital Center of Toulouse, CHU, is one of the five largest hospitals in France and is a pilot site for the establishment of a cluster-based organization as determined in the new French Hospital Governance. CHU counts 2,845 beds divided over five sites and has a staff of about 10,000 and over 1,620 doctors. Some 165,000 in-patients and 600,000 outpatients are treated per year.

During the first phase of implementation, existing management tools will be replaced by ORBIS tools, including Electronic Patient Record (EPR), scheduling, activity management and communication with technical departments. They will allow for one single consolidated database of shared patient records against the 68 segregated databases currently in use. The second phase in the implementation will include ORBIS' Prescription and Care modules, offering a care record and electronic prescription functionality that covers laboratory, radiology and medication.


"We expect ORBIS to significantly increase efficiency" said M. Morvezen, Directeur des systmes d'information (Chief Information Officer) and Chairman of the Hospital IT Committee at CHU . "Because it delivers real-time clinical and administrative patient information across the boundaries of the hospital departments and sites, the use of ORBIS will eventually result in a competitive advantage in terms of both quality of care and cost."

ORBIS is already today installed in over 750 hospital sites across Europe and is being used by some 400,000 users every day. Although it was only recently officially presented to the French market at Hpital Expo - Intermedica 2006, the major biennial healthcare exhibition in France, several healthcare institutions in France had already chosen ORBIS as their IT solution, including the hospitals of Annecy (887 beds), Vesoul (727 beds), Annemasse (648 beds), Magny-en-Vexin (360 beds), La Fert Bernard (306 beds) and Rumilly (261 beds).

"Together with the other recent wins in France, the Toulouse project illustrates Agfa HealthCare's and its customers' common approach in the reengineering of healthcare operations," said Alain Ramon, Managing Director of Agfa's IT Solutions division in France "With ORBIS, Agfa delivers a truly complete and transversal hospital-wide information system at single and multi-site healthcare organizations, both large and small."

Philippe Houssiau, President of Agfa HealthCare added: "Healthcare in France and Europe is in the process of a major transformation, due to socio-economic factors and technological advances. As the leader in Germany, Agfa HealthCare has proven that our comprehensive hospital IT system, ORBIS, considerably improves the quality of care and related costs; necessary in the context of healthcare reform. The decision by the University Hospital Center of Toulouse to select ORBIS confirms our ability to deliver this pioneering IT solution, fully adapted to the nation-specific needs in France. At the same time, we are beginning the implementation of ORBIS in pilot sites in Belgium and preparing entry into other key markets."

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