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ScImage Nets 3 Year Broadlane Agreement
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ScImage and Carestream Team Up
Carestream to Offer Powerful Cardiology Workflow Software Read more |
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ScImage Lands VHA
ScImage Solution to be Used for Centralized Teleradiology Project Serving more than 150 Centers Nationwide Read more |
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Enterprise-Wide Solution Integrates Cardiac and
Radiographic Studies, Enabling Facility to Practice Collaborative
Medicine
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Here
Founded in 1937, the 222-bed Alton
Memorial Hospital located in Alton, IL, served more than 90,000
patients in 2003. The local leader in cardiology services
and a member of BJC HealthCare based in St. Louis, Alton Memorial
Hospital opened the region's first diagnostic cardiac catheterization
lab in 1988 and the first balloon angioplasty program in 2000.
The hospital provides numerous other heart care services,
including enhanced external counterpulsation and a complete
cardiac rehabilitation program that features state-of-the-art
exercise and monitoring equipment.
Alton Memorial Hospital performs approximately 900 diagnostic
cardiac cath cases per year and also performs more than 70,000
radiology exams annually. Recently, Alton Memorial Hospital
announced an enterprise-wide digital imaging initiative. The
hospital intends to implement the project in multiple phases,
with the initial phase beginning with cath, echo and EKG capture,
information analysis, integrated reporting and system management
for the Cardiac Services Group.
Alton Memorial Hospital, Alton, IL
Assisting Alton with their digital initiative is Los Altos-based
ScImage. The enterprise PACS provider will serve both radiology
and cardiology to provide a single point of access for patient
studies and information generated in both the cardiology and
radiology departments. Once all phases of the project are
completed, ScImage's enterprise-wide PACS, PicomEnterprise,
will give caregivers at Alton Memorial - and eventually at
other institutions in BJC - an overall centralized integrated
solution with the means for accessing data collected in multiple
departments.
As part of the digital initiative, ScImage will also integrate
the capture of reports from legacy reporting systems and use
PicomEnterprise's Web-enabled Electronic Patient Folder to
store those reports alongside patient images to provide a
more complete record of patient exams for both attending and
referring physicians. Once in place, physicians will be able
to access all available patient images and the associated
information from a single login.
About the Hospital
Founded in 1936, Alton Memorial Hospital is a JCAHO-accredited, full-service
hospital serving the River Bend area of southwestern Illinois. Recognized
for its heart services, orthopedic surgery, oncology services, women's
health services, outpatient surgery and testing, gastroenterology,
pain management, pulmonary medicine, rehabilitation and sports medicine,
the hospital also provides numerous health education and wellness
programs to the people of Alton, IL and the surrounding communities.
In addition to boasting the area's only balloon angioplasty program,
Alton Memorial Hospital offers open MRI through Twin Rivers MRI Center,CT
services, PET imaging, nuclear medicine and cardiac and pulmonary
rehabilitation. The hospital operates a 24-hour emergency center and
the area's only hospital-based ambulance service. 225 medical staff
members and 596 FTEs provide these services. |
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Phase two will connect all of the
DICOM compatible modalities in the Radiology Services Group
so that digital images can be captured, stored and distributed
throughout the enterprise. Integration with the hospital's
radiology information system (RIS) was critical to Alton's
digital imaging initiative. In addition to storage for the
hospital's images, ScImage will also provide a means for managing
workflow and patient scheduling via an HL7 interface to the
hospital's Siemens Novius RIS. The integration will provide
the hospital a way to reduce data entry errors by utilizing
patient demographics that were entered at the time of admission.
This second phase of the project will begin in the fall of
2004 and will also include conflict resolution and DICOM modality
worklist functionality.
Phase three will bring the remainder of the modalities in
the Radiology Services Group up to the DICOM standard and
also add computed radiography modalities to enable standard
films to be read digitally. During this phase, the hospital
will also add high-powered radiology review stations for use
by the reading radiologists. Once phase three is complete,
the hospital's vision includes connecting the system to BJC
HealthCare's multiple campuses for image and information access.
"We took a lot of time to evaluate different vendors
including extensive site visits to narrow the search that
brought us to choose ScImage," stated Al Hibbett, manager
of Cardiopulmonary Services. "In the end, it was an easy decision
because they were able to meet our requirements of cost effectiveness,
use of non-proprietary hardware and satisfy multiple service
lines all under just one roof."
Clinicians now have a single point
of access for all patient studies
In addition to the web-enabled Electronic Patient Folder,
PicomEnterprise also employs ScImage's ForeverOnline architecture.
ForeverOnline is a low-cost, high availability solution that
employs intelligent image routing to serve high-volume, centralized
reading environments. This configuration of PicomEnterprise
combines a powerful multi-processor server with a highly scaleable
storage solution that eliminates the wait for image and information
retrieval by keeping everything online. Alton Memorial Hospital
will also coordinate its digital initiative using ScImage
PicomOnline Web-based disaster recovery hot site for both
secondary secure storage and backup application delivery for
teleradiology and remote access.
"We selected ScImage
because this project will be critical to the ongoing success
of the hospital and we knew that they could meet our aggressive
requirements for integration," stated Jack Wepler, manager
of Medical Imaging Services at Alton Memorial Hospital.
PicomEnterprise will allow multiple departments to store and
distribute patient information both inside and outside the
hospital. This will allow attending and referring physicians
at Alton Memorial Hospital to practice collaborative medicine,
which will ultimately lead to better patient care. |
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Customer Focus - Missouri Baptist
“ScImage’s ForeverOnline storage architecture makes backup for disaster recovery and business continuity a much more straightforward process.”
Douglas Sohn - Dir., Cardiac & Vascular Center
Missouri Baptist Medical Center - St. Louis, MO |
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