TalkStation 4.0 is designed to streamline radiology interpretation tasks and minimize the time and effort required to complete daily reporting activities. "The solution has a number of new features that improve the way physicians interact with the application," said Dr. Kevin Junck, associate professor of radiology and chief of radiology informatics at theUniversityofAlabamaat Birmingham (UAB) Health System. "It has become embedded in clinician workflow and even radiologists that were advocates of traditional transcription want to use it for everything."

New features include:

• Enhanced workflow for resident training, including customized activity worklists, attending physician rejection of reports, and 'read-out' workflow for joint report approval by resident and attending physician
• Web-based sign-off of reports supports resident- or transcription-based workflows
• "My Activities" toolbar makes it easy for radiologists to find preliminary and corrected reports and, in an academic environment, resident reports that need approval
• Automatic color coding of report text based on input device draws the radiologist's eyes to areas of the report that are at greater risk for inaccuracy
• User interface with virtually unlimited flexibility enables physicians to move, add or remove toolbars and toolbar buttons and choose from different skins to meet the lighting needs of multiple viewing room situations

In addition, TalkStation 4.0 enables more efficient report creation due to a reduction in both voice recognition errors and report editing time. "The most important thing in radiology reporting is accuracy," said Dr. Junck. "Our move to the latest version of Agfa HealthCare's TalkStation has provided a tremendous increase in speech recognition accuracy."

"TalkStation 4.0 has increased its recognition of my voice far beyond previous versions," added Dr. Robert Stanley, chairman emeritus of UAB's radiology department. "I roll along without a pause and when I check my report to sign off on it, I rarely need to make corrections."

TalkStation 4.0 seamlessly interfaces with IMPAX, allowing it to function as an integrated extension of the PACS, instead of operating as an independent application. For example, TalkStation is configured to automatically populate exam accession numbers from the PACS, eliminating a step that previously required physicians to initiate synchronization.

"Agfa HealthCare is committed to maximizing physician efficiency by helping radiology departments improve reporting quality," saidLenny Reznik,Director, Enterprise Imaging and Information, Agfa HealthCare. "With TalkStation 4.0, Agfa HealthCare advances radiology reporting with state-of-the-art technology, toolsets, and workflows."

Related news articles:

• Agfa HealthCare's Profile

About Agfa
The Agfa-Gevaert Group is one of the world's leading imaging and information technology companies. Agfa develops, manufactures and markets analogue and digital systems for the printing industry (Agfa Graphics), the healthcare sector (Agfa HealthCare) and specific industrial applications (Agfa Materials). Agfa's headquarters are in Mortsel, Belgium. The company is present in 40 countries and has agents in another 100 countries throughout the world. The Agfa-Gevaert Group achieved a turnover of 3,283 million Euro in 2007.

About Agfa HealthCare
Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading provider of IT-enabled clinical workflow and diagnostic image management solutions, and state-of-the-art systems for capturing and processing images in hospitals and healthcare facilities. Agfa HealthCare has over a century of healthcare experience related to diagnostic imaging and has been a pioneer on the healthcare IT market since the early 1990's. The HealthCare division has sales offices and agents in over 100 markets worldwide. Sales for Agfa HealthCare in 2007 were 1,392 million Euro, accounting for 43% of total group sales. For more information on Agfa HealthCare, please visit www.agfa.com/healthcare.