Heartlab: IHE participant and ACC Foundation recipient of software certification

Heartlab Inc. said this week it will participate in the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) technical framework demonstration for cardiology at the 54th American College of Cardiology (ACC) meeting, March 6-9, in Orlando. The program will target clinical cardiologists, cardiology administrators, and information services staff.
   
The March demonstration will focus on the integration of information within the cardiology department. In 2003, the ACC began working with IHE to define the integration needs of its more than 27,000 members and to develop a detailed technical framework for cardiology. The framework is designed to help vendors develop and test the interoperability of products for capturing, managing and archiving medical images and patient data. The document was released for trial implementation in July, and ACC 2005 will mark the debut of real products that conform to the IHE Cardiology integration profiles.
   
At the ACC show, Heartlab said it will participate with several other vendors in a live demonstration of their products.
   
In related news Heartlab's Encompass Results Management Version 2.04 has achieved ACC-NCDR CL v3.0 certification. As a vendor of ACC-NCDR CL v3.0 certified software, Heartlab provides its customers with a means to collect data required for participating in the National Cardiovascular Data Registry, Heartlab said.
   
The ACC-NCDR is a repository for information collected from cardiology catheterization labs nationwide. The organization provides quarterly institutional reports containing national and peer group statistics relating to diagnostic and interventional procedures performed in the cath lab. These institutional reports contain key performance indicators relating to patient demographics, history/risk factors, cardiac status, treated lesions, intracoronary device utilization and adverse outcomes.
   
The registry consists of data from more than 500 institutions and more than 1.6 million patient discharges. The data collected focus on outcomes rather than on volume alone and forms the basis of benchmark comparisons among hospitals, making it possible to assess the quality of cardiac care patients receive nationwide. Participation in the NCDR helps hospitals measure performance and improve quality of care.

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