IMAGE Information Systems Ltd. (IIS) is not only providing its sales partners with high-quality software solutions in the field of Radiology, but also collaborating with several medical imaging companies in order to join efforts and thus enable them to meet the requirements of individual and challenging radiology projects.

In 2010, IIS enjoyed a very successful cooperation with Intechgra Database Solutions Inc. from Eugene, Oregon, USA. KG Intechgra specializes in communications and interface solutions for the Medical Information Technology industry. Together with a leading local radiology group, they developed the web based radiology information system and workflow manager RadManager 2.0.

KG Intechgra had the following requirements for a customer's project:

• A router should be placed between 7 large PACS systems. Occasionally, one of the PACS systems will send a study to the router which needs to be forwarded to the “master PACS” system. The sending system and institution must be easily identifiable through the DICOM header.
  
• The Study Accession Number and the MRN both need to be changed in the DICOM headers before forwarding the images. (The challenge is that the values are contained in an external system database. They are accessed by using the key values contained in the DICOM header received from the external system. The external system is aware of both sets of MRN and Accession Numbers and can therefore easily match them.)
  
• The router should be able to either perform a query against the database, or to route the MRN and Accession Number (accession number would be sufficient) to the other system by file or some other means. The new header values should be provided through the query response, by file or some other means.
  

Since KG Intechgra's RadManager 2.0 was lacking the DICOM part of those requirements, IMAGE Information Systems cooperated by adding HL7 features to iQ-ROUTER in order to query the master patient index provided by Intechgra.

The resulting router version, iQ-ROUTER PREMIUM, was now able to identify patients and studies, to adjust patient and study identifiers, and thus ensure data consistency between multiple PACS systems.

At the moment, already several large imaging centers in the United States are successfully using RadManager 2.0 and iQ-ROUTER PREMIUM enjoying a smoother and efficient workflow.

The Sonnenhof Hospitals, comprising Klinik Sonnenhof and Klinik Engeried, are two of the leading private hospitals in the City of Berne, which is the capital of Switzerland. Founded in 1957 and 1907 respectively, both hospitals merged in 1998 and have complemented each other in providing high-quality medical healthcare ever since then.

Around 40 physicians and 150 external doctors affiliated to the hospitals ensure qualified medical care at any time of day for approximately 50.000 patients a year.

One of the most remarkable features of the Sonnenhof Hospitals is the big interdisciplinary emergency department situated at Klinik Sonnenhof. With more than 11.000 patients admitted per year, this acute care hospital is the second largest emergency care provider in the Bernese area.

Of course, such an emergency department comes along with a high amount of medical images acquired every day. To manage, distribute and properly store that image data, the Sonnenhof Hospitals started using iQ-WEBX 10 in 2007. Two years later, they decided to have the IMAGE partner and x-ray company lumedi upgrade their PACS to iQ-WEBX in order to connect an unlimited number of modalities and viewing stations with the PACS. This step was especially necessary, since over 400 referring physicians are working online with this system, on only one server in the same network.

The hospitals use iQ-WEBX as a long-term archive, which is currently managing over 6 terabyte of images coming from different modalities, such as CR, DR, MR, CT or US. The system allows physicians to work in department-related groups, such as surgery, orthopedics, etc.

Starting in 2010, lumedi further installed iQ-VIEW as the hospitals’ DICOM reading station of choice in all operating rooms. Also 14 physicians and 2 professors are equipped with iQ-VIEW reading stations in their offices. The DICOM print server iQ-PRINT PRO is used to cost-effectively print medical images directly from any modality or workstation of the hospital on a XEROX laser printer.

Dr. Stefan Werlen, head of the hospital's radiology department, confirms that iQ-SYSTEM PACS has been well received by the hospital staff. "Even though there is a challenging IT situation due to the continuous growth of the hospital and changing staff, the demand for training can be easily met, since iQ-SYSTEM PACS requires only little instruction being easy to learn and to use. All in all, it is a very intuitive and reliable system, which also our referring physicians have come to appreciate a lot", he states.