By Clinical Informatics News Staff 

 

February 21, 2014 | Georgia Regents Medical Center (GRMC), a not-for-profit corporation in Augusta, Georgia that provides clinical operations as a cooperative organization for Georgia Regents University, has installed Philips IntelliSpace PACS v4.4 to serve as a single, integrated clinical IT platform. 

 

The Royal Philips Picture Archiving and Communication System will allow clinicians to access a patient's complete imaging history from any department across the care continuum, the vendor company said in a press release, and will enable GRMC to extend access to imaging data to its more remote regional care facilities. 

 

Royal Philips says the managed service delivery model of Philips IntelliSpace PACS encompasses total cost of ownership, simplifies IT operations and provides built-in flexibility, scalability and interoperability.

 

"The role of technology is to ease the burden on clinicians and allow them to focus on what truly matters: patient care," said James V. Rawson, MD, FACR, Chief of Radiologic Services at Georgia Regents Medical Center, in a press release. "This new Picture Archiving and Communication System from Philips enables us to store, access, and review everything from old X-ray films to the most advanced digital images in all modalities, including PET, CT, MRI, and ultrasound. Having a patient's complete medical history and images incorporated into the electronic medical record (EMR) and readily available will improve patient outcomes and lower costs."

 

The pilot installation at GRMC started with radiology and will expand to cardiology, obstetrics and all other imaging services over the next few months. The tool consolidates and stores multi-vendor clinical images from multiple departments across several systems, managing virtually all medical images from radiology, cardiology, dermatology, endoscopy, ophthalmology and more. 

 

Philips IntelliSpace PACS is part of the growing portfolio  within Philips recently-launched Healthcare Informatics Solutions and Services Group, which offers consulting and solutions services to hospitals and health systems as they pursue new, more effective models to improve access, optimize workflows and increase quality across the continuum of care. IntelliSpace PACS interoperability with the EMR provides relevant data and collaboration throughout the enterprise to significantly advance workflow management, diagnostic imaging and reporting.

 

In June 2013, Philips and GRMC entered into a 15-year $300 million agreement to improve outcomes and deliver more effective and cost-efficient care to the four to six million people who live in the region across Georgia and South Carolina being served through GRMC, Children's Hospital of Georgia, Georgia Regents University Cancer Center and the health system's numerous outpatient clinics.