March 25, 2011 – The Foundation of Orthopedics and Complex Spine (FOCOS) has selected CoActiv EXAM-PACS at its new FOCOS Orthopedic Hospital in Ghana, West Africa, set to open in mid-2011.
The not-for-profit hospital was founded by Oheneba Boachie-Adjei, M.D., an attending orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City (HSS). Boachie-Adjei was born in Ghana. The hospital is supported in part by HSS volunteers and donations of equipment and supplies.
“The FOCOS Orthopedic Hospital is a demanding installation, and CoActiv EXAM-PACS is an excellent choice to meet its full range of needs,” Boachie-Adjei said. “The CoActiv PACS provides an extremely user-friendly interface as well as a broad range of advanced features, including the specialized orthopedic features required to read detailed spine images. Also important to the selection of the CoActiv technology is its ability to easily communicate files for remote reading anywhere around the globe using cloud-based architecture.”
The hospital will offer a full range of advanced modalities, including CT, MRI, X-ray and biplanar fluoroscopy exams. Many of these images will be sent across the globe to HSS for interpretation and surgical planning. With year-round services delivered on both an inpatient and outpatient basis, the hospital anticipates a start-up volume of about 6,000 exams annually. Initially, the FOCOS Hospital will install about 12 workstations, but anticipates imaging volume to grow as the hospital expands, making system scalability important.
In addition to managing images, the system will enable the hospital to store a full range of scanned documents in patient files. It will also provide the standards-based formatting to support an electronic medical record (EMR) in the future. These features are extremely important to help the hospital manage its large and diverse population drawn from a large geographic area.
“CoActiv’s EXAM-PACS will fulfill an important role at the hospital by providing a powerful system to store a full range of patient imaging data that at the same time is easy-to-use and will not make onerous demands of the hospital’s limited IT infrastructure,” Boachie-Adjei said. “Because of its state-of-the-art architecture, the CoActiv system will make the most of our existing resources without placing large demands for more advanced supporting technology.”
The mission of FOCOS is to make optimal surgical and non-surgical care of disabling musculoskeletal problems including complex spine and pediatric orthopedic disorders available in developing nations. The hospital will comprise nine buildings on five acres and initially provide 50 beds. Staffed by a combination of salaried and volunteer staff, it is expected to treat 5,000 patients annually, primarily to improve the quality of life as well as life expectancy for scoliosis and orthopedics patients. Scoliosis is an extremely widespread medical condition throughout most parts of West Africa and has significant impact on the population.
“We are pleased and proud to be part of this important effort to provide much-needed medical assistance in underserved areas of Africa,” said Ed Heere, president and CEO of CoActiv. “We were moved by the conviction of all involved in the project and wanted to contribute by making EXAM-PACS available for a nominal fee that covered some of our hard expenses. The hospital is the culmination of the energy and support of a group of extremely dedicated medical professionals and will bring state-of-the-art care, delivered using state-of-the-art technology, to address a crucial need. CoActiv’s cloud-based system will play a key role facilitating this by enabling physicians across the globe to offer remote consultation and diagnosis.”
For more information: www.coactiv.com
November 19, 2024 
