LUMEDX completes extensive cardiovascular PACS deployment at IHS

LUMEDX Corporation, a leading provider of vendor-agnostic, integrated medical imaging and information systems, announced the completion of an extensive cardiovascular PACS deployment at Iowa Health Systems (IHS). Working together with IHS, a team of technical and clinical experts implemented CardioPACS multi-modality imaging system at ten affiliate hospitals across Iowa and western Illinois in under six months’ time. The first site, Trinity Regional Medical Center in Fort Dodge, went live July 3, 2009; by December 16, all ten sites were using CardioPACS.

“This project represents one of the most expansive and most sophisticated cardiovascular PACS deployments in this country to date”

“This project represents one of the most expansive and most sophisticated cardiovascular PACS deployments in this country to date,” said LUMEDX Chief Operating Officer Chris Winquist.

Iowa Health System is Iowa’s largest integrated health network, with 26 affiliated medical centers and 140 physician clinics delivering care to nearly one-third of patients in the state. Implementing CardioPACS is part of an ongoing LUMEDX-IHS project to develop a centralized, enterprise-wide cardiovascular (CV) image- and data-management system that meets Iowa Health’s clinical and business objectives. Multi-modality and vendor-neutral, CardioPACS is ideally suited for this project, offering highly customizable image and data management with a fully integrated suite of applications, modules and interfaces.

According to LUMEDX Director of Imaging Systems Praveen Lobo, “The Iowa Health PACS deployment is unprecedented in terms of both scope and sophistication. First, there are the numbers involved: ten hospitals; two states; many, many users; every existent cardiovascular modality—cath, echo, nuclear, to name just a few. Second, and equally important, is the architecture we designed to support the IHS organizational structure.”

“Iowa Health System is comprised of smaller systems, hospitals grouped together, as well as individual hospitals. Because of this, IHS needed their PACS to be operationally distributed yet technologically centralized. We created data clusters: tiered databases so all the sites and groups could retain their independent identities and workflows while simultaneously bringing the information all together for the overall Iowa Health System,” explained Lobo. This design—combined with a concerted IHS effort to get their infrastructure in place in advance—led to a rapid series of highly smooth implementations.

“The success of this project has led us to conclude that this is how integrated health networks can and should be deploying PACS systems for the greatest economic and efficient benefits,” Winquist added.

CardioPACS has been implemented at the following Iowa Health System affiliate sites:

• Des Moines
  • Iowa Lutheran Hospital – Des Moines, IA
  • Iowa Methodist Medical Center – Des Moines, IA
  • Methodist West Hospital – West Des Moines, IA
• St. Luke’s Hospital – Cedar Rapids, IA
• Trinity Regional Medical Center – Fort Dodge, IA
• Allen Memorial Hospital – Waterloo, IA
• Trinity Medical Center – Quad-Cities
  • West Campus – Rock Island, IL
  • Terrace Park Campus – Bettendorf, IA
  • 7^th Street Campus – Moline, IL
• Saint Luke’s Regional Medical Center – Sioux City, IA