Translating as “the region of Mid Jutland”, Region Midtjylland is an area in the central part of the Denmark Jutland peninsula. The region’s municipal city, Aarhus, is the largest city of Jutland and the second-largest city of Denmark as a whole, as well as the home of Aarhus University Hospital (AUH) – a nationally renowned healthcare provider and an integral component to the Region Midt hospital operation.
The 10-strong network of clinical sites develop and provide highly specialised medical treatment, research and education, affiliated with local universities and implemented at an international level. In particular, Aarhus University Hospital is not only the local hospital for Aarhus residents and the island of Samsø; it also offers specialised treatments to residents from the Central Denmark region and further afield. Ranked the best hospital in Denmark consecutively since 2008, the Aarhus site houses the hospital network’s IT operation, a vast infrastructure of technical professionals and IT pioneers who maintain the entire hospital network to ensure efficient healthcare delivery using the best digital platforms available.
One such area of the hospital, imaging, was a focal point for investment when their three imaging systems were nearing the end of contract. In 2018, the requirements for the hospital had changed from respective singular systems to a collaborative project across all Region Midt sites. This meant that several incumbent imaging systems, from a host of different hospitals, were considered for change, and elements of migration, integration and professional learning were among some of the challenges envisaged. Across the Region Midt network, two different PACS and a single RIS were active, and the aim was to converge into a single PACS collaboratively. Region Midt’s IT leads, Lene Lund, Diagnostics Manager and Henrik Vestring, IT Product Manager, invested efforts into creating a proof of concept to demonstrate best consolidation of the site’s systems, offer standardisation to the project, and confirm the validity of clinical outcomes.
Henrik reflects:
“Clinicians working from multiple hospitals using two different PACS was problematic. Radiologists were performing clinical reports from different sites and experiencing different workflows at each. This resulted in differing ways of working and varying process methodologies. As we have a shortage of radiologists in any case, adding additional obstacles to their working practices was not an efficient or practical way to work.”
Lene expands:
“We had to consolidate into a single collaborative approach in order that patients can have a natural flow if they are in one Region Midt hospital, or another. Hospitals should be able to collaborate on patients, so standardization of the imaging operation would in the best interests of the those”.
After a competitive procurement process, Region Midtjylland, already an Agfa HealthCare IMPAX user, opted for AGFA HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging platform across all ten Region Midt hospital sites. Following a lengthy deployment, made challenging with the restraints of Covid-19, the last site went live with Enterprise Imaging, including CT, Nuclear Medicine and Cardiology modules, in January 2023.
Enterprise Imaging is now in use across all sites, and the hospital is already seeing the benefits of a converged platform, streamlined clinical methodologies and collaborated service and support. With other specialist areas, such as Mammography and Augmented Intelligence (AI), planned for 2023 deployment, both Region Midt and AGFA HealthCare celebrate another Enterprise Imaging client to add to the growing community of #TeamAgfa.
Lene comments on the platform:
“We definitely increased the quality of the work with the new system, and we now have some opportunities to make some changes across all Region Midt hospitals in order that they see the of processing workflows and clinical tasks in the same way.”