Agfa HealthCare (Mortsel, Belgium), a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare information technology (IT) solutions, has signed an agreement with Forcare (Zeist, The Netherlands), a leading provider of interoperability solutions.

The agreement endorses Agfa HealthCare to market Forcare's solutions for Health Information Exchange (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. The overall agreement enables Agfa HealthCare to resell software products nonexclusively from Forcare on a global basis.

IMPAX Data Center customers will benefit from expanded solution's capabilities, enabling fast access to clinical data--both inside and outside the healthcare institution--effectively improving efficiency in care processes and saving time and cost. The IMPAX Data Center provides large-scale multimedia storage of all types of native Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images and diagnostic results for hospital groups, regional healthcare organizations, and national medical archives. The solution brings diagnostic imaging data from disparate systems into a unified, tightly integrated, and centrally managed system to fulfill the needs of all enterprise users, and serves a key role in creating a longitudinal imaging-enabled electronic medical record (EMR).

"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,” said Georgios Spitadakis, head of marketing healthcare IT Europe at Agfa HealthCare. "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.”

"We are very pleased with this new OEM relationship with Agfa HealthCare. It is an exciting and strategic expansion of our market reach,” said Harm-Jan Wessels, CEO of Forcare. "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.”

Guangzhou Jia Yu medical equipment Limited