Global Care Solutions identified in 1997 that a single integrated Total Hospital Information System (THIS) is what clinicians and administrators need for their facilities. This would provide users with optimal work flow and reliability. Since those early days, a totally integrated, single database solution that serves the entire facility’s needs was born: GCS Hospital 2000 Suite and the GCS Amalga PACS/RIS.

A Total Hospital Information System

Hospital 2000 and the Amalga PACS/RIS are the results of careful design and intense collaboration with doctors, radiologists, pharmacists, laboratory technicians, nurses and departmental specialists to identify and meet the needs of healthcare professionals. As a result of careful design and planning, Global Care Solutions software can enhance the efficiency of healthcare rendered to patients and the productivity of all hospital departments.

The Hospital 2000 solution includes: Registration, Clinic Systems, CPOE,Ward, Emergency Department, Laboratory, Radiology (RIS), Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS), Clinical Image Management, Pharmacy, Operating Theatre, ER, Enterprise Appointments, Billing Systems, Patient Accounting, Claims Management, Purchasing, Inventory, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Asset Management, Human Resources, Rostering/ Time and Attendance, and Payroll.

At Global Care Solutions, research and development is an ongoing process; the software evolves from direct feedback of caregivers and administrators.

A PACS in the THIS

The GCS Amalga PACS is part of the larger product suite of Hospital 2000. It can also be used as a PACS/RIS and be integrated into your existing hospital information system (HIS). The Amalga PACS inherits functionality from the departmental modules to deliver an enterprisewide solution. For example, the Amalga PACS includes a highly scalable document management system designed to handle more than just the order forms in a radiology department; it is designed to handle the entire medical records department of the largest facilities in the world. The Amalga PACS also integrates all picture data such as pathology, ophthalmology, dermatology and other images in the facility.

Enterprise Purchase

Hospital information systems selection is an enterprise decision. It involves all the clinical staff, but should also include all administrative and back-office users as well.Why integrate all departments together in one system? Everyone in a hospital works together as a team and information needs to be freely available from one discipline to another.

Breaking down the departmental walls enables work flows that have only been imagined. With an enterprise system, the hospital gets more value for money and the budget can be spread across more departments.

Keep It Simple

Hospital 2000 and Amalga PACS are built on a simple guiding principle: The fewer moving parts and third-party vendor products, the higher the chance of success. To this end, the system is based on familiar technologies such as Microsoft® Windows® 2003, Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 and desktops, servers and storage. Hospital 2000 and Amalga PACS also integrate with existing systems via our builtin HL7 engine. All GCS products support HL7, CCOW, IHE, DICOM and many other integration standards.We know that some systems must be integrated with the Hospital 2000 solution, so we embrace the standards while we enable facilities to migrate toward a single solution.

Architecture – The Heart of the System

The architecture of Hospital 2000 and Amalga PACS is designed to be simple and powerful. It is based on a three-tier architecture utilizing the Microsoft .NET Framework. This enables desktop PCs, Tablet PCs and other Microsoft Windows-compatible devices to communicate seamlessly with the data center through middle-tier servers. This data center consists of a single database server solution that can be clustered or replicated for ultimate reliability. It is also very cost-effective and designed to stay that way.

The Hospital 2000 architecture is specifically designed for extremely high uptime ratings – keeping one database server running reliably is much easier than running multiple systems. It is also much easier to back up and replicate a single server to a disaster recovery site. Cost-effective RAID solutions are widely available, easy to back up or replicate and their fault tolerance ensures business continuity even during the worst disaster situations. System uptime is assured. The facility’s reputations and patient lives depend on it.

A typical 500-bed tertiary care facility would run all applications in a single Dell 6650 server containing a fourprocessor Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz CPU with 16 GB of RAM. Storage is simple as well. It is based on Dell/EMC CX3-20/40/80 storage systems. It is simple, cost-effective and uses only 8 square feet of floor space on the computer room floor. In fact, this size hardware configuration has experienced 1.8 billion transactions per year with the GCS Hospital 2000 suite of products using Microsoft SQL Server 2005, at 99.999 percent uptime. In addition, data is never purged, archived, moved or deleted.

The Global Care Solutions Hospital 2000 single server solution is so cost-effective that eventual replacement can be justified every three to five years, giving the facility the fastest solutions and keeping them well within budget.

Many system administrators worry about reliability or potential disasters in single-server solutions. This is exactly the point: It is easier to cluster, back up and/or replicate a single system than multiple systems. The facility benefits as follows:

• A production system based on a single-server/ storage solution leaves enough budget for a cost-effective backup data center. This option would not be affordable in the “best of breed” multiple database architectures, with multiple operating systems and databases;
• A single server/database solution is easier to back up and restore;
• Service contracts and maintenance are simpler, due to having to deal with fewer vendors – finger-pointing is reduced;
• Clinical users and hospital management;
• The facility’s computer department also benefits, as it is much easier to train the administrators how to manage a single system; and
• The data is in one server with no duplication or possibility of mismatch. All data is real time, so decisions can be made faster.

The GCS Amalga PACS shares this common systems architecture and allows all images to be stored online using RAID storage. This highly scalable design provides rapid retrieval of both today’s and historical studies.With online storage systems that operate at 160 MB per second, even the largest multi-slide CT study is no problem. All study retrievals – current and priors – are very fast.

Technology changes rapidly – planning for it will make system selection easier. Today we know current archive media will become obsolete during the useful life of your new PACS. The music CD made vinyl records obsolete quite quickly; even CDs are predicted to vanish in the next five years due to online music. The message is clear – plan now for obsolescence and eventual change. GCS has created tools to painlessly move from the current Amalga PACS archive to future media (with no downtime). Open standards and nonproprietary storage techniques are used in the archive, allowing simplified backups and data migration. PACS systems contain terabytes of storage, so ensuring the archive can be migrated in the future will certainly pay dividends.

Web Delivery – The Key to Being Filmless

The GCS Amalga PACS Web client is now built on Microsoft .NET Framework. No-touch deployment makes it painless for software installation.Web image delivery is essential to the success of any enterprise PACS.With the GCS Amalga PACS, a Web client is “built in” to the PACS server architecture, enabling seamless and real-time image delivery. GCS Amalga PACS supports a choice of data compression formats and technologies such as JPEG 2000 (wavelets) and adaptive binary optimization. Security, encryption and all the necessary technologies ensure patient data privacy and HIPAA compliance.

GCS Amalga PACS – No Hidden Options

The GCS Amalga PACS is a complete solution where all the features are “built in,” not “bolted on.” The integrated, seamless design of all GCS products makes the Amalga PACS a complete solution. Builtin features include: MPR/MIP, CD creation, DICOM printing, frame grabbing, film scanning, CAD-enabled, Adobe Photoshop® image processing plug-in-compatible, teaching folders and MIRC-compliant. The GCS simple philosophy of “built in” ensures that facilities get all of the features to operate their department as they envisioned.

Computer-Aided Detection

Computer-aided detection will become an indispensable diagnostic tool in the future. A typical example of computer-aided detection is in the mammography field. The software looks for micro-calcifications and irregularly shaped masses with specific characteristics, and performs a “second read” for the radiologist. This has proven to be an aid to the radiologist and has improved patient safety.

Today there are several computer-aided detection solutions on the market, but they are based on proprietary hardware and are generally expensive. GCS has enabled the GCS Amalga PACS workstation software so it is Adobe Photoshop® image processing plug-in-compatible, encouraging the radiology community to write their own computer-aided detection algorithms and simply install them on the GCS Amalga PACS. We firmly believe that computer- aided detection should be available to everyone everywhere.

Software Licensing Made Simple

All licenses from Global Care Solutions are for unlimited users and unlimited workstations to enable you to expand without penalties. When the facility expands, buy more PCs and start using the system with no extra license fees from Global Care Solutions.

Designed to Be Cost-Effective

The entire range of Global Care Solutions products are designed to be cost-effective. One of the most difficult systems for a facility to cost justify is a PACS, as they are a major capital-intensive purchase. It does not have to be that way, as the price of technology declines and performance improves on an almost daily basis. Take for example a hypothetical hospital with 100,000 studies per year and compare the cost of staying with film versus going digital, taking into consideration film, chemicals and storage only, versus the fully loaded costs of the GCS Amalga PACS. The calculation for the GCS Amalga PACS includes the cost of servers, storage for 10 years of online studies, six diagnostic workstations based on Barco Coronis LCD technology, replacement of all workstations in year six (due to obsolescence), GCS Amalga PACS software and a 10-year maintenance contract. This calculation also assumes a film reduction rate of 0 percent in the first year, 50 percent in the second year and 75 percent for the remaining years. The ROI takes less than 18 months, and the 10-year savings is over $2.2 million. This does not take into account any savings on full-time employees (FTE) and improved patient care, so the ROI can be faster.

Global Care Solutions Is Internationally Recognized

The industry analysts and users have rewarded Global Care Solutions for our hard work with industry awards. Global Care Solutions has won:

Frost & Sullivan SEA PACS and HIS awards for 2006 – In July 2006, Frost & Sullivan awarded Global Care Solutions the “Frost & Sullivan SEA PACS Market – Growth Strategy” and the “Frost & Sullivan SEA HIS Market – Product Line Strategy.” Frost & Sullivan analyst Adam Chee comments for the HIS award:

“GCS continues to excel in its use of technology to deliver a fully integrated Total Hospital Information System (THIS) and demonstrates clear leadership in providing solutions that fulfill the needs of a connected healthcare facility.” For the PACS award, he comments, “The fact that GCS has challenged and beaten other industry giants in their bid to implement PACS in several prestigious hospitals across Southeast Asia speaks volumes about their growth strategy and overall product excellence.”

Best Data Management Award – Global Care Solutions won the “Data Management Solution of the Year” category at the 2003 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. The GCS Amalga PACS solution was one of more than 1,000 entries from around the world considered for awards in 16 different categories.

MS-HUG Acute Care: Best Acute/Clinical Patient Care System – In February 2003, Global Care Solutions Amalga PACS/RIS won the Acute Care Clinical/Patient Information Systems category. The award was presented at HIMSS 2003 in San Diego.

Finalist MS-HUG Acute Care: Clinical/ Patient Information System – Global Care Solutions was named finalist in the Microsoft Industry Solution Awards for Healthcare in the Clinical/Patient Information category for the Hospital 2000 system. The awards recognized independent healthcare software vendors worldwide.

The Future

Global Care Solutions will continue to pioneer innovative, cost-effective, scalable and very reliable healthcare solutions based on Microsoft and Intel platforms.We are committed to enabling the enterprise through enterprise THIS and PACS solutions. Take advantage of our passion.

Global Care Solutions provides software exclusively for the healthcare industry. GCS has two main products: Hospital 2000 enterprise HIS, and the Amalga PACS/RIS.