First IHE based Regional Cardiology Network operational in The Netherlands
Released on: June 24, 2008, 2:05 am
Press Release Author: Forcare B.V.
Industry: Healthcare
Press Release Summary: Zeist (The Netherlands), June 24 2008 - The Medical Center Leeuwarden (MCL) hospital in the northern Dutch province Friesland has gone live with the Cardiology Network Friesland. With this network Friesland is the first region in The Netherlands to base its health information exchange on the IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) standard.
Press Release Body: MCL has chosen to use the products from Forcare B.V. (Zeist, The Netherlands) to realize the health information exchange network. Forcare offers compliance to the IHE XDS profile through is forIndex, forView, forConnect and forStore products. Whereas MCL has used CDs, facsimiles and e-mail to exchange cardiac images, reports and ECGs before, it now uses the Forcare products to share clinical information with full diagnostic quality. MCL indicated that besides vast improvements in quality of patient care, financial savings are achieved because of reduced patient stay and simplified internal processes for sharing information.
Maarten Festen (project leader MCL): "We are very pleased with Forcare's products. They are easy to install, easy to use and help us making the exchange of clinical information safe and transparent for clinicians. Our cardiologists love the fact that they have immediate access to diagnostic quality cardiac images, ECG waveforms and a variety of clinical reports from remote hospitals through their own workstations. Forcare's products integrate seamlessly with our existing clinical systems. As a hospital we can now offer faster treatment to cardiac patients, reducing the burden they feel from unnecessary waiting. This is a major improvement compared to the existing situation. ".
Harm-Jan Wessels (managing director Forcare B.V.): "We are proud that MCL has selected Forcare to install the first IHE XDS based health information exchange network in The Netherlands. The cooperation between the hospital IT staff, cardiologists and our IT staff was perfect. This project demonstrates the advantages of IHE XDS compared to other more proprietary alternatives. The network is based on open, international standards and allows MCL to re-use the infrastructure for health information exchange in a multitude of clinical domains".
The cardiology network is the first result of the cooperation agreement signed between the Medical Center Leeuwarden and Forcare B.V. earlier this year. Extensions of the network towards other clinical domains are foreseen for the near future.
Web Site: http://www.forcare.nl
Contact Details: Forcare B.V. Laan van Vollenhove 3221 3706 AR ZEIST The Netherlands Phone: x31-30-6991930 Mail: info@forcare.nl