Agfa completes deployments at two trusts

Agfa HealthCare has completed deployments of its systems at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Leicester has become one of just a handful of organisations in England to provide a fully digital breast screening service, following the integration of Agfa Healthcare’s IMPAX picture archiving and communication system with its radiology informCtion system and the National Breast Screening System.

The move covers the breast screening service at Glenfield Hospital and the mobile screening service that covers Leicestershire and Rutland.

Joan Richards, superintendent radiographer for breast imaging, said: “Our options were either to go for a stand-alone system, or full integration with Agfa HealthCare’s PACS, and we selected the full integration option.

“Our main reason was that scans that a patient may have had in the past would be automatically available for review on the system. Our breast imaging service is now fully integrated and as such is one of the largest in the country.”

Agfa has also completed the deployment of the latest version of its computed radiography system at the largest cardiothoracic hospital in the UK.

Papworth Hopsital has replaced its existing Agfa CR system with the DX-G, to increase efficiency and cope with rising numbers of patients coming into the thoracic radiology service.  

Carolyn Dyer, principal radiographer of general imaging, said: “Agfa HealthCare’s DX-G digitizer is able to scan an image in approximately 10 to 20 seconds, six times faster than before.

“The software package is very user-friendly and produces excellent, comparable digital images with the specially adapted chest software. This also gives us the added bonus of being able to reduce average patient X-ray dose while still maintaining excellent image quality.”