RSNA/US launch for EU healthcare consultancy
Launched in 2005, and introduced to a broader healthcare public at the 2006 European Congress of Radiology (ECR), Agfa Healthcare Consulting is now to be introduced to potential customers beyond Europe – at this year’s RSNA in Chicago.
The group aims to provide strategic planning consultations for hospital managers, to help reach their healthcare and business objectives. To date, Agfa reports that the consultants have advised over 35 customers in nine European countries.
Its broad portfolio of services includes the development of strategic direction, situation analyses, return on investment analyses, resource allocations advice, and workflow adaptations, Agfa explained. It also lists among its offerings ‘Business Intelligence’ and a ‘Business Case’ service. The latter, Agfa said, aims to analyse the strategic and financial effects of digitisation projects on the whole organisation (including HR, accounting, etc.) and helps create a financial plan (ROI, Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, etc.).
Agfa Healthcare’s Services business marketing manager, Hendrik Wacker, outlined reasons for starting the group: ‘We had customers who knew they had to transform their infrastructure, yet didn’t have the means to form a business case for this change. Taking this further than a pre-sales engagement for a PACS/RIS solution sale meant looking beyond a standard radiology installation towards a complete hospital workflow re-engineering case. This includes performing in-depth analyses of management projects, such as strategic justification, financial and human resources. Two years ago we realised that we were doing much more work in actual business consultancy than needed to support a Hospital IT sale, which at the time was Agfa’s core business. Indeed our customers began to value having an external expert go into the hospital and analyse their workflow. Based on the experience that Agfa has of the hospital environment, we understood that we should offer structured advice also on areas where we, as a company, do not even provide a technology solution – such as issues based around medical workflow and infrastructural re-organisation across the enterprise. We therefore decided to make this consulting service distinct from the traditional pre-sales engagement by forming a group with dedicated consultants, focusing on the management consulting aspects.’