GENEVA, Switz., November 7― Following a multi-year contract extension with Carestream Health, Vue Cloud Services are now live at Nij Smellinghe Hospital, the first hospital in The Netherlands to move to off-site storage and archiving using a Software-as-a Service (SaaS) model. For over a decade Nij Smellinge has partnered with Carestream for its healthcare information systems and this latest deal delivers Vue Cloud PACS and vendor-neutral Vue Cloud Archiving to facilitate fast, secure image and data access by onsite and remote clinicians without the burden of infrastructure management and costs.
“We were facing increasing amounts of data, obsolescence of archives and unpredictable capital expenditure,” said Wim Loman, Head of IT at Nij Smellinge Hospital. “Now with Vue Cloud Services, Carestream takes care of everything for us and the fee-per-study structure means that we are able to confidently plan our finances. If we want to introduce a new modality that produces say 10,000 studies we know exactly what it will cost on an annual basis. Such knowledge is extremely useful in terms of TCO impact.
“We now also enjoy increased levels of security,” added Wim Loman. “Carestream proactively monitor the system 24/7, which leaves us to redirect our time and resources elsewhere. The service is scalable and flexible allowing us to make adjustments with the ebb and flow of workflow and managing migrations is also a thing of the past as Carestream does this for us.”
With the Vue Cloud Services contract, Nij Smellinghe receives continuous technology improvements and built-in disaster recovery. “Not only is all our patient data store in the data centre, we also have copies onsite in case contact is lost between the data centre and the hospital,” continued Wim Loman. “Carestream also make back-ups so there are always three copies of patient data at any one time.”
Nij Smellinge Hospital serves a population of approx.125,000 in the north of the country and has a reputation for delivering high quality health services through the use of advanced technologies. It was the first hospital in The Netherlands to move to remote archiving 3 years ago, and this latest contract extension for Vue Cloud PACS provides increased operational advantages to that service. The radiology department currently manages around 85,000 studies annually, a figure that is growing at approx. 5% a year.
Customers across the world are increasingly purchasing Carestream Health’s cloud-based RIS/PACS and vendor-neutral archiving services to streamline operational efficiencies and reduce costs. Vue PACS Services deliver full PACS functionality for image review, storage and distribution throughout the enterprise including delivering advanced reading tools to remote radiologists. Vue Archive Services offers virtualized, vendor-neutral long-term storage as well as data protection, and disaster recovery of clinical data such as DICOM images and XDS documents. The Vue Portal enables healthcare providers that use the company’s archive service to allow access to that data by authorized clinicians anywhere in the world through a simple Internet connection.
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About Carestream Health
Carestream Health is a worldwide provider of dental and medical imaging systems and healthcare IT solutions; molecular imaging systems for life science research and drug discovery/development; x-ray film and digital x-ray systems for non-destructive testing; and advanced materials for the precision films and electronics markets.
For more information about the company’s broad portfolio of products, solutions and services, please contact your Carestream Health representative or visit .www.carestream.com.
CARESTREAM is a trademark of Carestream Health.
2011