Agfa HealthCare, headquartered in Mortsel, Belgium, is one company filling this growing niche, offering what the company calls “enterprise imaging,” an idea encapsulating the push toward smart imaging technologies that seamlessly integrate and communicate with one another.
On Sept. 1, Bill Corsten became president of Agfa HealthCare North America. Before joining Agfa HealthCare, Mr. Corsten served as senior vice president of solution sales at M*Modal. He also served as vice president of sales and customer operations of McKesson.
Here, he shares his vision for Agfa HealthCare’s future and his thoughts on the growing marketplace of medical imaging.
Note: Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Question: What are your plans for Agfa HealthCare?
Bill Corsten: As North America President for Agfa HealthCare, my overarching mission will be to align our operations with Agfa HealthCare’s global vision and to understand globally where the organization is going. I believe that for Agfa HealthCare North America to succeed our initiatives must advance our overall global effort, and vice versa, since North America, particularly the U.S., is such an important growth opportunity for the company.
Specifically, I have set forth three guiding principles for Agfa HealthCare North America. First, I am committed to building our customer base. The U.S. healthcare system is, in my estimation, the most forward thinking in the world, and thus ideally suited for the tools and technologies that Agfa HealthCare delivers. As such, I see a tremendous opportunity in renewing our focus on driving net new customers to increase overall revenue contributions to Agfa HealthCare, which will in turn be used to develop new solutions to deliver greater value to our entire customer base.
Second, I want to increase the value that Agfa HealthCare brings to its customers. In my view, equally important to winning new business is ensuring that those who have chosen to align themselves with Agfa HealthCare continue to see us as a value-add to their organization. To ensure this, we must work collaboratively with our customers to identify, deliver, and then monitor the expected outcomes derived from an investment in our technology or service.
And third, Agfa HealthCare will provide best-in-KLAS service to our current customer base – both imaging and IT. I want our customers and prospective customers to know, with certainty, that we are absolutely committed to their success.
Q: How are you using your 23-year IT experience to guide your vision for Agfa HealthCare?
BC: A long time ago, it became clear to me that if you put others’ interests before your own, you both will find success. It’s prioritization of interests. This is a philosophy, what I call the “Priority Principle,” that is core to my leadership and one that I will impart throughout our North America operations.
Specifically, with respect to healthcare imaging, over the past 20 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with providers and health systems across many settings of care. Today, there is an evolution of the role of medical imaging and healthcare, moving from departmental solutions to an enterprise-wide solution. We need to evolve our customer organizations and their skill sets; the tools we use to support them; the best practices we try to instill; and we need to put all this in place to support the transition.
Transforming organizations is going to take time. We have the right people, level of commitment and the folks supportive of global partners to make this transformation as smooth and expeditious as possible.
Q: In your career, how have you seen medical imaging and health IT change over the past two decades?
BC: The traditional role of imaging has revolved around radiology and to a lesser extent, cardiology. However, as I mentioned previously, medical imaging is evolving to where it is now used widely across the entire healthcare delivery system, requiring the exchange of information and communication across multiple departments and provider settings and geographic boundaries.
Studies and surveys show medical imaging is actually being performed in 40 different departments. However, if those medical images are not integrated within the hospital’s or health system’s EHRs, those images are essentially “invisible” to other caregivers within the organization. Today there is no single caregiver system. Providing workflow infrastructure to create, integrate and consolidate all these images across the enterprise will knock down those barriers. Access to these images is the cornerstone of the EHR. It’s incomplete if you don’t have access to these images.
Care delivery is no longer a single-physician exercise. Dynamically built teams of caregivers deliver integrated care to patients in need. These physicians need to exchange imaging and multimedia information to enable collaboration on patient care.
Q: In your ideal vision of healthcare, what is imaging’s role?
BC: We like to talk about imaging as being the heart of a clinically rich medical record where access to multispecialty images is as simple as a mouse click. This is absolutely critical within a healthcare setting where images are as much a part of today’s diagnostic process as blood pressure and body temperature.
However, the value of images to a patient’s well-being can extend beyond the hospital walls. The most important constituent in our healthcare universe is the patient and their families. They can use clinical images to understand their clinical documentation. It is coming together to bring that better medical record to the patient.
True unique workflows of different departments across settings of care need to come together and optimize the demand of different sources to really complete the EHR and maximize the investment. No technology alone is going to transform healthcare systems. It’s the adaptation of technology into the workflow and care plans that’s going to drive it. Technology and workflow can maximize the value of an EHR investment.
Given all of these dynamics, it’s an exciting time at Agfa Healthcare and in particular for the North American Region. We have an opportunity to make a big impact by aligning our enterprise imaging technologies with the rapidly growing industry demand. Agfa HealthCare is positioned for growth and is ready to invest in the appropriate functions to help ensure that growth.
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