Agfa announces today that the Sunderland Royal Hospital, UK, a 970-bed acute hospital, which is part of South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, has implemented two DR 600 fully-automated direct radiography (DR) X-ray rooms.  The agreement was signed at the end of 2018. The two X-ray rooms were implemented in phases, to avoid disrupting the radiology department: the installation of the first room was completed in mid-July 2019, and the second in September 2019.

“The DR 600s have not only allowed us to increase our throughput, but have also helped us produce higher quality images for less dose,” comments Paul Simpson, Radiology Operational Manager, South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust. “The ZeroForce technology has reduced the amount of physical effort required by the radiographers. The Full Leg Full Spine (FLFS) system is very simple to use, and produces images of a much higher quality for a much lower dose when compared to our old FLFS system.”

As the Agfa DR uses the same interface as its computed radiography (CR) solutions, staff training was minimal and adoption of the new solutions was smooth. Paul Simpson continues, “Staff generally love the DR 600 rooms: they are intuitive and easy to use. As the department has used Agfa’s digital radiography systems for over a decade, everyone was already familiar with the MUSICA workstation and image processing. This has meant that training has been very easy and the radiographers have quickly come to rely on the DR 600s as their go-to equipment of choice.”

He concludes: “The move from Agfa CR to Agfa DR was an obvious one. We have had great image quality with CR and MUSICA since day one, so we expected nothing less from Agfa’s DR offering. The DR 600s have given us the fast throughput, easy-to-use equipment and – most importantly – high image quality we were looking for.”

Read the full press release here.