NEW ORLEANS – Ochsner Health System has centralized its image storage with new technology that manages diagnostic image access and distribution across the enterprise.

The hospital has deployed the IMPAX Data Center from Belgian company Agfa HealthCare.

The new system "provides clinicians with easy access to our medical imaging data from anywhere in the hospital enterprise, regardless of originating department or hospital facility," said Lynn Witherspoon, MD, system vice president and chief information officer. "By providing access to the most current data from across the entire Ochsner system, it gives our clinicians a complete longitudinal view of the patient imaging record."

Witherspoon said the new system makes imaging information available to physicians using a single query, while allowing hospitals and clinics to keep their existing PACS and imaging solutions in place.

In addition, he said, it helps Ochsner reach its goal of a personal medical record that is virtually attached to a patient, making the patient's health information available whenever and wherever the patients are present for care.

Ochsner selected IMPAX Data Center in 2008 to consolidate data from disparate multi-vendor Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) and clinical systems from its seven hospitals and 35 health clinics onto a single point of storage. Before the system was installed, Ochsner had to consolidate imaging data from multiple vendor PACS solutions in separate locations and departments, including images from radiology, cardiology, obstetrics, ophthalmology, and endoscopy systems.