Agfa HealthCare And Forcare Sign Health Information Exchange (HIE) Resale Agreement For Healthcare IT Portfolio

Agreement enables Agfa HealthCare to complement its healthcare IT portfolio with cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) components for HIE solutions.

• Agfa HealthCare to market Forcare's technology solutions for HIE (*)
• Enables Agfa HealthCare to offer its leading IMPAX Data Center solution with cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) components to address the broad range of HIE infrastructure needs, both for centralized and federated configurations.
• IMPAX Data Center customers benefit from expanded solution capabilities enabling fast access to clinical data, inside and outside the care facility.

(RSNA Booth #8336) Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions, announces recently that it has signed an agreement with Forcare, a leading provider of interoperability solutions. The deal facilitates Agfa HealthCare to market Forcare's solutions for Health Information Exchanges (HIE), which will enable customers to share clinical data and support key clinical processes amongst healthcare institutions. Specifically, it will enable Agfa HealthCare to offer its leading IMPAX Data Center solution with cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) components, tightly integrated into its solution. IMPAX Data Center 2.0 supports XDS with a Document Repository and XDS-I with an Imaging Document Source and an Imaging Document Consumer proxy, but Agfa HealthCare works with other companies to provide best-of-breed HIE components.

Expanding the power of IMPAX Data Center
IMPAX Data Center customers will benefit from the expanded solution's capabilities, enabling fast access to clinical data, inside and outside the healthcare institution, effectively improving efficiency in care processes, saving time and cost. IMPAX Data Center, launched by Agfa HealthCare in 2007 and currently serving customers across Europe and North America, provides large-scale multimedia storage of all types of native DICOM 3.0 and/or DICOM 3.0 encapsulated medical images and diagnostic results for hospital groups, regional healthcare organizations and national medical archives. The solution consolidates the data from disparate systems into a single repository to fulfill the needs of all enterprise users. IMPAX Data Center brings diagnostic imaging into a unified, tightly-integrated and centrally-managed system. It serves a key role in creating a longitudinal imaging-enabled electronic medical record (EMR) or electronic health record (EHR).

High standards and expectations for future growth to support changing customer needs and healthcare trends
"Agfa HealthCare is continuously seeking to team with companies that can meet our high standards and support the ongoing changes in customer needs and healthcare trends. We are committed to leading innovation in data consolidation, data sharing and shared workflow, with both our Imaging IT and our Enterprise IT portfolio," states Georgios Spitadakis, Head of Marketing Healthcare IT Europe at Agfa HealthCare. "This agreement shows our dedication to this approach. Agfa HealthCare, with its leading radiology information system (RIS)/ picture archiving and communication system (PACS), cardiovascular information system (CVIS) and Data Center solutions, and Forcare, with its HIE components, will offer end-to-end solutions for healthcare institutions that want to meet high standards in patient care."

"The complementary knowledge and expertise of both companies is a fruitful basis for developing new, innovative HIE solutions, respecting standards compliance and the security and privacy needs of patients and healthcare institutions," affirms Geert Claeys, Manager Technology and Innovation at Agfa HealthCare.

Harm-Jan Wessels, CEO Forcare comments: "We are very pleased with this new OEM relationship with Agfa HealthCare. It is an exciting and strategic expansion of our market reach. Being selected to provide Agfa HealthCare with our Health Information Exchange product portfolio shows our commitment to innovative, standards-based interoperability and underlines our leading market position."

Andries Hamster, Chief Marketing Officer Forcare adds: "Combining Agfa HealthCare's impressive RIS and PACS product portfolio with our IHE XDS-based interoperability suite will bring value to its customers, by providing a standards-based solution for clinical data sharing."

The overall agreement enables Agfa HealthCare to non-exclusively resell software products from Forcare on a global basis.

(*) Work In Progress for North America

About Agfa
The Agfa-Gevaert Group is one of the world's leading companies in imaging and information technology. Agfa develops, manufactures and markets analog and digital systems for the printing industry (Agfa Graphics), for the healthcare sector (Agfa HealthCare), and for specific industrial applications (Agfa Materials). Agfa is headquartered in Mortsel, Belgium. The company is present in 40 countries and has agents in another 100 countries around the globe. The Agfa-Gevaert Group achieved a turnover of 2,755 million euro in 2009.

About Agfa HealthCare
Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading global provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions. The company has nearly a century of healthcare experience and has been a pioneer on the healthcare IT market since the early 1990's. Today Agfa HealthCare designs, develops and delivers state-of-the-art systems for capturing, managing and processing diagnostic images and clinical/administrative information for hospitals and healthcare facilities, as well as contrast media solutions to enable effective medical imaging results. The company has sales offices and agents in over 100 markets worldwide. Sales for Agfa HealthCare in 2009 were 1,178 million euro. For more information, visit www.agfahealthcare.com.

About Forcare
Forcare B.V. is a Dutch software company, specialized in interoperability in healthcare IT. The company delivers health information exchanges to healthcare providers, enabling them to share clinical information using open, internationally standardized solutions. Forcare is a leading supplier of IHE XDS solutions in Europe. Next to software products, the company also offers consultancy services on healthcare standards and clinical information architectures. For more information, visit www.forcare.nl.

SOURCE: Agfa HealthCare