Continuum Health Partners Completes System-Wide Technology Refresh Of PACS Imaging Displays

Healthcare imaging specialist Barco is supplying more than 350 new medical display systems to equip Continuum Health Partners’ two flagship hospitals with the latest PACS image viewing technology. A wide range of diagnostic, mammography and clinical review displays are now deployed throughout the hospital, elevating the quality of medical image presentation across the enterprise.

When Continuum Health Partners decided to merge the PACS systems of their largest New York City hospitals, St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center and Beth Israel Medical Center, their singular focus was to create an enterprise-scale PACS system that would facilitate the delivery of high quality patient care. The result: a single medical imaging platform – with Barco displays integrated into every diagnostic and clinical workstation – that would streamline workflow and improve the productivity of more than 10,000 physicians.

Elevating image quality throughout the hospital
“We’ve been well-acquainted with Barco’s products since the early 2000s, so when it came time for an enterprise-wide upgrade to next-generation display technology, they were the logical choice because of their superior, reliable performance and outstanding image quality,” commented Tarek El-Shayal, PACS Manager for Continuum Health Partners. “ We replaced every medical display with a Barco model, making a conscious decision to install Barco’s MDRC series monitors in our clinical workstations to ensure consistently matched images throughout our hospital network.” More than 100 displays are deployed in Radiology, with the remaining in Emergency, ICU and various departments, as well as the hospital’s Stroke Center.

Radiologists at Continuum Health Partners, New York, NY concur: “We rely daily on Barco to deliver the clearest and sharpest image quality possible via its world-class displays, which are a critical part of our PACS solution. Every detail counts, as every minute detail affects the course of care to our patients. We must rely on the best image resolution to deliver such accurate diagnosis on every study we perform.”

Automated QA ensures continuous, optimum performance
In addition to the MDRC-2120 monitors, Continuum deployed hundreds of Coronis Fusion 6MP DLs, 3MP and 5MP displays for breast imaging, and Barco’s MediCal QAWeb, an automated, online quality assurance and calibration service that keeps all displays on the network running at high performance with optimum efficiency. “QAWeb is one of the most important tools we have. We especially appreciate the proactive monitoring features, email alerts and the essential Mammography QA and calibration capabilities. With more than 500 screens located throughout six hospitals and eight imaging facilities, it would be extremely time consuming to perform QA on every display continuously like QAWeb does. The centralized dashboard, issue notifications, and other automated features are essential to maximizing uptime and ensuring continuous compliance and accuracy of the displays,” continued El-Shayal.

A team approach to attentive customer service
Consistent quality imaging, high reliability and guaranteed clinical performance are all critical needs for Continuum, but customer service is just as important. “With Barco, we get prompt response to our needs through a well-coordinated effort among their sales, technical support and customer service teams.  The unified platform also really facilitates support throughout our network.”

“We are honored that Continuum has the trust in Barco to supply all of their medical imaging needs. We strive to deliver not only the best technologies, but also ergonomic capabilities such as multi-modality imaging and aesthetic features designed to maximize radiologists’ productivity and comfort,” commented Mike Sklar, Vice President Sales, Healthcare for Barco North America.  “Top-shelf customer care is also a hallmark of Barco to ensure that customers are always getting the most out of their medical imaging investment.”

About Barco
Barco, a global technology company, designs and develops visualization products for a variety of selected professional markets. Barco has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco is active in more than 90 countries with about 3,700 employees worldwide. Barco posted sales of 1.041 billion euro in 2011.