Ghana hospital invests in Cloud

RIDGEFIELD, USA: The Foundation of Orthopedics and Complex Spine (FOCOS) has selected CoActiv EXAM-PACS for the viewing, management, archiving and communications of medical images at its new FOCOS Orthopedic Hospital in Ghana, West Africa, set to open in mid-2011.

According to Dr. Boachie, “The FOCOS Orthopedic Hospital is a demanding installation, and CoActiv EXAM-PACS is an excellent choice to meet its full range of needs. The CoActiv PACS provides an extremely user-friendly interface as well as a broad range of advanced features, including the specialized orthopedic features required to read detailed spine images. Also important to the selection of the CoActiv technology is its ability to easily communicate files for remote reading anywhere around the globe using cloud-based architecture.”

Dr. Boachie notes that the hospital will offer a full range of advanced modalities, including CT, MRI, x-ray and biplanar fluoroscopy exams. Many of these images will be sent across the globe to the Hospital for Special Surgery and to his office in particular for interpretation and surgical planning. With year-round services delivered on both an inpatient and outpatient basis, the hospital anticipates a start-up volume of about 6,000 exams annually. Initially, the FOCOS Hospital will install about 12 EXAM-PACS workstations but anticipates imaging volume to grow as the hospital expands, making system scalability important.

In addition to managing images, the advanced CoActiv solution will enable the hospital to store a full range of scanned documents in patient files, while providing the standards-based formatting to support an electronic medical record (EMR) in the future. These features are extremely important to help the hospital manage its large and diverse population drawn from a large geographic area.

Dr. Boachie comments, “CoActiv’s EXAM-PACS will fulfill an important role at the hospital by providing a powerful system to store a full range of patient imaging data that at the same time is easy-to-use and will not make onerous demands of the hospital’s limited IT infrastructure. Because of its state-of-the-art architecture, the CoActiv system will make the most of our existing resources without placing large demands for more advanced supporting technology.”

The mission of FOCOS is to make optimal surgical and non-surgical care of disabling musculoskeletal problems including complex spine and pediatric orthopedic disorders available in developing nations.

“We are pleased and proud to be part of this important effort to provide much-needed medical assistance in underserved areas of Africa,” says Ed Heere, president and CEO of CoActiv.