Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of IT systems for clinical workflows and diagnostic imaging, has completed the first implementation phase of ORBIS™ system at the AZ Groeninge hospital in Kortrijk, Belgium. ORBIS is the cutting edge hospital IT system from Agfa HealthCare for managing the entire workflow across hospital departments. This hospital is one of several pilot sites in Belgium where Agfa HealthCare is offering an integrated platform that combines clinical, administrative and workflow systems into a single, patient-centered system.

Over a three-year period, Agfa HealthCare's ORBIS system will gradually replace the information management systems currently in use in the hospital. During the first phase of the project, which ran from August 2006 through July 2007, the basic components of the system were implemented, with primarily medical and partly nursing applications. Since May, several physicians and their administrative offices have been testing ORBIS for among others generating medical documentation (medical history, operative reports, discharge letters, and the like), retrieving old documents, selecting patients according to various criteria, and integrating PACS images and reports. Currently the system is being tested by the nursing departments. More specifically, ORBIS will initially be used to record 'minimal nursing data', and the system will be tailored to the Belgian context.

The comprehensive implementation in all the hospital units means that all users will soon discover that they can access information from other medical disciplines in the hospital using ORBIS. "Introducing a hospital-wide data system requires vigorous project planning, a balanced team and a hefty dose of mutual trust between the partners in the project. In implementing ORBIS at our hospital, it is precisely that trust that is the critical success factor," says Project Manager Jan Suykerbuyk of the AZ Groeninge hospital. He adds: "With Agfa, we have a healthcare company that not only knows software, but whose workforce also comes from the hospital sector, so they understand our logic very well. The Agfa HealthCare team is constantly aligned to the project, and we notice that the right skills are put to use at the right time. It is an open process, and we communicate a great deal about it. It's obvious that Agfa HealthCare has experience with this kind of complexity. The best practices we get from the company are clearly based on its vast experience in installing ORBIS. The team that is working here is very adept at customizing their approach to our context."

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