iSoft Germany expand lab services customer base
- 7 March 2007
iSoft Deutschland has announced their first laboratory system deployments in the private sector and drug research sector, plus laboratory and radiology implementations and the first tests of a new compulsory electronic health card.
Last week, the company announced it had signed its first private laboratory services contract after deploying its LabCentre system at the private labrotory Dr Reising-Ackermann centre in Eastern Germany.
iSoft Deutschland’s chief executive officer, Peter Herrmann told E-Health Insider: “This implementation is a huge step forwards for iSoft as it is the first contract we have implemented outside of traditional hospitals and signals the beginning of what could be a solid business relationship with the private sector.”
The Dr Reising-Ackermann centre is the largest private laboratory network in Eastern Germany and employs over 200 specialists, including 34 physicians, at seven sites. It serves several hundred general practitioners and more than 40 hospitals with a full range of laboratory-diagnostic services.
iSoft’s laboratory management solution LabCentre will help manage workflows within the clinical laboratory, human genetics, blood serology, blood product maintenance and storage, blood donation, and microbiology. Integrated communications provides paperless order entry and results reporting plus real-time access to a common database and test histories.
Herrmann added: “Our lab application is a market leading product in Germany and is recognised as the number one system for hospitals in the country. It has also been sold outside of the region throughout Europe, Asia and Australia and New Zealand.”
In February, the company installed LabCentre technology in the Global Drug Discovery unit of pharma giant Bayer Healthcare AG as a tool for the planning process for repeat research. In total iSoft have reported taking orders worth over £4.1m (€6m) during the past quarter.
iSoft Germany is now in discussions to launch the product in the UK’s large-scale regional laboratories and testing is continuing to ensure the system is compatible with the eventual release of the Lorenzo system, though the current release is not based on the same architecture.
Herrmann told EHI: “We have had an extremely successful year so far in Germany, which I believe is mainly because we offer a quality assurance product. The moves to drug research and the private sector are significant steps forward for us. We plan to keep to the same vein and are committed to continuing this successful trend.
“We are in a number of discussions with colleagues in the UK and are doing a Gap Fit analysis of the system to see how to launch it in large scale regional laboratories. With our wide ranging business base, I believe it can offer the UK market a new solid laboratory system tried and tested worldwide.”
iSoft Germany has also become the first developer to release and test the compulsory German electronic health card.
Testing began in two pilot sites, Löbau-Zittau and Flensburg, on around 10,000 members of statutory health insurance plans.
Herrmann said: “We are proud to have been the first to develop and test these cards and progress is going well. We are a little concerned that other suppliers have not started work on their versions and so we feel in the dark about where this project is currently heading to.”
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