UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER TAPS ALGOTEC FOR MAJOR ENTERPRISE-WIDE PACS
Demonstrates Greater Scalability and Reliability than Major Vendors
Duluth,
GA, September 5, 2002--Algotec, the innovative Picture Archiving and
Communications System (PACS) and image management company, has been
selected by University of Virginia Health Science Center (UVAHSC) to
provide a large-scale enterprise-wide Web-based PACS, following an 18-month
search of major competing vendors.
With installation to be launched in October, the ambitious PACS
will directly link the radiology department on the main campus with
three satellite facilities. It
will utilize the hospital intranet for web-based communications throughout
the enterprise as well as for teleradiology sites and at-home reading.
According to Dr. Matthew Bassignani, assistant professor of radiology
and Director for Radiology Information Systems for UVAHSC, “Based on
our extensive search, Algotec was the only vendor able to demonstrate
the scaleability, reliability, and sophisticated features that met our
demanding requirements while being free of the proprietary software
issues noted with other vendors.” A 675-bed hospital with over
32 staff radiologists handling over 300,000 cases annually, UVAHSC is
a major healthcare resource serving the central and western Virginia
regions. It is renowned for its clinical and academic excellence
across the country and has been named among the “Top 100 Hospitals”
by Solucient for over two years.
“We wanted a PACS that was easy to use
but that could provide sophisticated function and robust features
within radiology and fast, seamless access to any authorized user on
the hospital network,” comments Bassignani.
“The PACS needed to function flawlessly throughout the enterprise
while accommodating the large volume of data generated by the department.”
To ensure reliability, UVAHSC also wanted an unusually high level of
redundancy and fault-tolerance. “UVAHSC is committed to offering the
highest level of medical care 24/7. We needed a system that would never
go down — not an easy task for any vendor, but Algotec was eager to
work with us to accomplish this goal,” said Bassignani.
At the time of the purchase, UVAHSC
already had an Algotec ICU PACS linking radiology with the emergency
room and intensive care units. “We looked at RFP responses from
all major PACS vendors and went on site visits with some of the dominant
players. We found that no one could reference an installation already
in place meeting our stringent requirements,” comments Sean Moynihan,
Director of Information Systems for UVAHSC’s Department of Radiology.
“Algotec’s proposal to expand our ICU PACS into an enterprise-wide system
came closest. Our experience with the Algotec system for over two years
made us confident that the underlying architecture would support the
scalability and reliability we were seeking. What’s more, Algotec already
had strong acceptance among clinicians. The choice was obvious.”
He notes that the Algotec PACS also
had a customizable user-friendly interface, advanced web-based viewing
features and wavelet compression for lossless image viewing.
For the ambitious installation, UVAHSC
has already purchased two fully redundant RAID EMC 8730, with a total
capacity of 15 TB of online storage, complemented by 45 TB of long-term
storage on a tape library. The Algotec architecture will allow UVAHSC
to operate two independent data centers, ensuring continuity even under
extreme disaster conditions. A total of 35 Algotec MediPrime primary
diagnostic reading stations enable soft-copy reading across all facilities.
Standard PC monitors will offer cost-effective image viewing
throughout the hospital using Algotec’s MediSurf technology, which has
been the basis for UVAHSC’s ICU PACS.
“Algotec is pleased to have been
selected by such a prestigious institution with a longtime commitment
to using cutting edge technology to improve healthcare,” said Menashe
Benjamin, CEO of Algotec. “We
look forward to a continued long and productive association with the
advanced medical center.”
The University of Virginia Health
Science Center is a fully accredited and serves as tertiary referral
facility for central and western Virginia and parts of North Carolina
and West Virginia. UVaMC
employs 450 faculty physicians, 657 residents and fellows, 1,300 professional
nurses, and 4,000 full-time support staff.
Algotec Systems Ltd. is a developer
and system integrator of Web-based image management, archiving, processing
and communication systems sold under the name ImagiNet.
In 1997, Algotec was the first company to receive FDA clearance for
a Web-based image distribution and display system and has over 140 installations
of this system worldwide. Headquartered in Israel, Algotec has fully
owned marketing and sales subsidiaries in the US (Duluth, GA), France
(Paris) and Germany (Wiesbaden).
Algotec's ImagiNet family of
solutions includes the ProVision - a 3D multi modality processing workstation,
MediPrime - a radiology reading and reporting station, MediSurf - a
Web based image and data access and display engine, MediStore - a multi
media, multi tier archiving system, MediFlow - image management software,
MediLink - a configurable interface to healthcare information systems,
Med-e-Mail - an automatic email reporting system of key images and reports
to referring physicians, and CD-Surf - a self playing, soft copy (CD)
media to substitute the films
that are now given to patients and referring physicians.
