Electronic health records

Toronto-area hospitals go live with web portals

TORONTO – Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of IT-enabled clinical workflow and diagnostic imaging solutions, announced that The Credit Valley Hospital, William Osler Health Centre, and Halton Healthcare Services in Mississauga, Ont., are sharing patient data through a Web-based electronic healthcare record (EHR) viewer, ensuring all three sites can securely share all patient records, regardless of legacy IT systems or vendors.

The ability to share patient records puts another valuable tool in the hands of physicians that promises to have a dramatic effect on patient care and operational efficiency by reducing redundant treatments and medical errors.

The Credit Valley Hospital is the latest Canadian hospital to implement Agfa HealthCare’s IMPAX Clinical Dashboard eHealth portal solution (powered by MEDSEEK). Deployed in just over 90 days, the IMPAX Clinical Dashboard extends vendor-neutral, enterprise-wide IT system interoperability between the three disparate hospitals.

Users have the ability to easily access critical patient information from any PC, handheld, PDA, or tablet PC with Internet access. Data can be retrieved from any of the three facilities – whether it resides at William Osler Health Centre’s two sites (Etobicoke and Brampton) or the three sites of Halton Healthcare Services (Oakville, Milton, Georgetown).

The portal solution has the ability to serve the nearly one million residents currently living in Mississauga, Brampton, Halton Hills, and Oakville.

“Due to the regional programs at The Credit Valley Hospital, it’s critical that all departments are able to share data amongst providers and partners, while providing a complete, up-to-date patient medical record,” said Dan Germain (pictured), vice president, CFO and CIO, The Credit Valley Hospital. “Agfa HealthCare’s IMPAX Clinical Dashboard solution integrates all patient clinical data with the other healthcare facilities in the region, facilitating LHIN-wide, province-wide and even nation-wide data-sharing.”

Building on this first stage in a long-term eHealth portal strategy, The Credit Valley Hospital plans to eventually extend a patient portal with dynamic transactional functionality to its regional constituents, promising to have a dramatic effect on wait-times and patient safety, while significantly reducing costs and redundancies, such as test duplications due to missing or unavailable information.

“Connecting The Credit Valley Hospital, William Olser Health Centre and Halton Healthcare Services is a great achievement for the Mississauga region,” said Dieter Pagani, director of Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise solutions group. “It’s the first step to enhancing patient care, and creating a national EHR platform consistent with Canada Health InfoWay’s EHR Blueprint.”

“Agfa’s federated portal model is a ‘win-win’ situation for hospitals – simple in premise, and deployed at a fraction of the time and cost of competitors, with immediate return on investment,” added Pagani. “These hospitals are truly eHealth leaders in Ontario, and have taken a quantum-leap towards eliminating the traditional barriers associated with sharing data.”


About Agfa HealthCare

Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading provider of IT-enabled clinical workflow and image management solutions, and state-of-the-art systems for capturing, processing and printing images in hospitals and healthcare facilities. The company has over a century of experience in diagnostic imaging and has been a pioneer on the healthcare IT market since the early 1990’s. Agfa HealthCare today employs 5,700 staff members, with sales offices and representatives in over 100 markets worldwide. Sales for Agfa HealthCare in 2006 were 1,452 million Euro, accounting for 43% of total group sales.

For more information on Agfa HealthCare, please visit www.agfa.com/healthcare.


About Credit Valley Hospital

The Credit Valley Hospital is a 366-bed community hospital providing leadership in the delivery of primary, secondary, and tertiary health care services to the people of Mississauga and the surrounding region (approximately one million people). The hospital spans approximately 770,000 square feet, and provides a broad spectrum of clinical services involving 10 programs: general medicine, surgery, renal, oncology, emergency, mental health, continuing care/rehabilitation, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics and cardiac services. CVH provides a regional service for medical genetics, nephrology, maternal/child care and oncology.

The new cancer centre is designed for six radiation treatment machines and currently operates four. In the winter of 2008, Phase II of the hospital’s expansion project will begin which will provide an additional 270,000 square feet to accommodate complex continuing care, paediatrics, labour & delivery and laboratory services as well as additional inpatient beds.

For more information or updates please visit www.cvh.on.ca.