Acuo authorizes Agfa, announces PACS Aggregation Engine
Acuo Technologies announced at HIMSS07 that it has appointed Agfa HealthCare, developer of the Impax PACS / RIS Solutions, as its authorized software reseller, covering Agfa and Acuo’s North European region in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Nordics. This relationship will enable Acuo to expand its ability to distribute and support products in Western Europe and give Agfa HealthCare access to that portfolio of products to complement its own Impax PACS / RIS Solutions.
“Agfa HealthCare recognizes the need for standards-based infrastructures, and their services will strengthen Acuo’s presence in Western Europe,” said Shannon Werb, CTO and COO, Acuo Technologies. “Acuo and Agfa HealthCare continue to drive the ‘Powered by Acuo’ brand and empower solution providers to deliver lower cost, better performing image management solutions to their customers.”
Acuo also announced the availability of a new software component, the PACS Aggregation Engine, a component of the Acuo DICOM Services Grid, which can be licensed and used with any third party DICOM-compliant application, such as DICOM workstations and traditional department PACS. Common applications include location of DICOM objects across multiple DICOM devices in a single query; pre-fetching content from multiple DICOM devices with a single request; and data migration from multiple DICOM archives.
“Acuo’s software suite, the DICOM Services Grid, is designed to provide a Grid computing environment to enable aggregation and federation functionality for sharing of DICOM data through virtualization,” said Werb.
The engine is a middleware application that can communicate to multiple PACS and archives, according to Jeff Timbrook, CEO. Timbrook said that many healthcare organizations are becoming interested in enterprise document sharing. Thanks to improving standards, organizations now can migrate their data off of legacy systems. “Five years ago, users just went with the archive that came with their viewer,” he said. Although it’s a painful process, it’s getting easier and the data is then much easier to manage. Timbrook said that in Europe most RFPs require both enterprise document sharing as well as a general purpose DICOM archive. As standards improve, healthcare facilities will have the means to implement a standards-based architecture.
“Agfa HealthCare recognizes the need for standards-based infrastructures, and their services will strengthen Acuo’s presence in Western Europe,” said Shannon Werb, CTO and COO, Acuo Technologies. “Acuo and Agfa HealthCare continue to drive the ‘Powered by Acuo’ brand and empower solution providers to deliver lower cost, better performing image management solutions to their customers.”
Acuo also announced the availability of a new software component, the PACS Aggregation Engine, a component of the Acuo DICOM Services Grid, which can be licensed and used with any third party DICOM-compliant application, such as DICOM workstations and traditional department PACS. Common applications include location of DICOM objects across multiple DICOM devices in a single query; pre-fetching content from multiple DICOM devices with a single request; and data migration from multiple DICOM archives.
“Acuo’s software suite, the DICOM Services Grid, is designed to provide a Grid computing environment to enable aggregation and federation functionality for sharing of DICOM data through virtualization,” said Werb.
The engine is a middleware application that can communicate to multiple PACS and archives, according to Jeff Timbrook, CEO. Timbrook said that many healthcare organizations are becoming interested in enterprise document sharing. Thanks to improving standards, organizations now can migrate their data off of legacy systems. “Five years ago, users just went with the archive that came with their viewer,” he said. Although it’s a painful process, it’s getting easier and the data is then much easier to manage. Timbrook said that in Europe most RFPs require both enterprise document sharing as well as a general purpose DICOM archive. As standards improve, healthcare facilities will have the means to implement a standards-based architecture.