This post has been published earlier on Google+ !
Only insiders may know that Agility was never meant to be a PACS. A couple of years ago we started to develop an entire new image management platform. We agreed on the internal code name ‘Agility’, never having in mind to use it as a product name. Meanwhile almost all of our new developments are based on this platform.
Radiology and cardiology solutions are marketed as ‘IMPAX Agility’, whilst all enterprise imaging solutions are now called 'ICIS' (Imaging Clinical Information System’).
I had a close look at ICIS as extending the scope of imaging outside of radiology and cardiology is on everyone’s plan today. With ‘ICIS Store’, formerly known as IDC, we had already a proven solution over the past years. A remarkable innovation concerns the introduction of a workflow engine. Whilst it is not much of a problem to share data via XDS, it is crucial to enable the support of collaborative workflow across different disciplines and organizations. To me this module has a high potential to further improve the communication amongst all stakeholders.
The frontend, ‘ICIS View’, remains a zero-footprint solution that enables access to data from everywhere and on every device. It was shown with a couple of new features, most visibly the integration of 3D capabilities and new data sharing mechanisms. Worth to mention is also the improved support for video editing and conversion, significantly simplifying the handling.
‘ICIS Vivid’, also available for smart phones and tablets, supports now capturing and uploading of data. This opens new possibilities, especially considering the increasing number of sensors available for mobile devices.
‘ICIS Venue’ allows the simultaneous and consolidated access of data from various repositories. This module caught the interest of clients which have to integrate data from various legacy archives.
For a selected audience we also provided a look beneath the surface of ICIS and provided an in-depth presentation of the underlying concepts.
Based on the same platform, but dedicated for the radiology and cardiology audience we have presented IMPAX Agility. You would call it a PACS.
However, having a closer look there are quite some differences to the products I have seen so far. E.g. the solution is built around a task-based workflow engine and it is interesting to see how easy different flows, for different tasks, depending on procedure, clinical data, and other parameters can be configured by means of the included graphical editor. I know such solutions from the EMR space, but I have never seen this implemented in any other RIS or PACS.
The user interface is extremely well designed. A lot of work was done, helping to reduce mouse movement and speed up the work.
The implementation of hanging protocols itself is unquestioned outstanding. The ability to seamlessly integrate 3D views into the hanging protocols is really impressive.
Reporting is another innovation. I’d call it, a more user friendly way of structured reporting. Sections or chapters can be configured based on context specific information. All information available in the system can be used to fill section templates automatically with the content of any DICOM Tag or any HL7 field. Results of measurements can be dragged into the report. Integration of speech recognition is straight forward. It feels extremely ergonomic and fast.
The solution claims to be fully compliant with the standards. Indeed, it seems to digests everything: MF, US Measurements, waveform display, etc. If a specialty workstation would still be required, any IHE compliant workstation can be connected.
Users reported to be very pleased with the performance of the system even working from home. That makes me feel positive for deploying this solution into the cloud soon.
I missed also some features which are typically found in legacy Systems. Some have been not implemented yet and others dropped from scope. Not everything once declared to be a mandatory requirement for a PACS must make sense today. And as I said before: Agility was never meant to be a PACS!
Last but not least: The coffee at our booth looked somewhat different compared with the one we served at HIMSS. Nonetheless, it had an excellent taste.
Thanks again for joining us! I look forward to see you at #WoHIT in Nice!
