Image management is one of the toughest tasks that healthcare CIOs take on—given the need to gather, store, access, and analyze the rapidly-expanding volumes of patient images. But the mission is critical. All of these images tell a patient’s clinical life story.
With the recent proliferation of affordable digital technologies such as point-of-care ultrasounds, digital cameras and medical/surgical scopes, images in varying formats will continue to be produced in record numbers. The key to managing these images is a comprehensive enterprise strategy that addresses five core components in a standardized, vendor-neutral way:
- Acquisition: Healthcare IT pros must discover the technologies and clinical workflows used to acquire medical images across as many as 40 service lines before developing their EMR optimization plans.
- Storage: Keeping medical images on-hand involves more than just storage; it also requires an in-depth disaster recovery plan and whole-system monitoring to ensure images are available and secure 24×7.
- Access: Until now, physicians have accessed medical images in a variety of cumbersome ways— ranging from portals to unsecure CDs and other portable media delivered directly by the patient into the doctor’s hands. What doctors need is to access to medical image libraries through the EMR, accessible for viewing regardless of device or source of acquisition.
- Sharing: The ultimate goal is for clinicians to be able to collaborate securely, sharing patient images both within the same healthcare provider and between providers—regardless of where those images reside.
- Analytics: Clinicians also need to analyze medical images and associated meta-data in a thoughtful, patient-centric way that leads to new diagnoses and treatments. This benefits both individual patients as well as the larger patient population.
When these core components are properly addressed within the healthcare system’s enterprise imaging strategy, the end results include improved care coordination, increased clinician satisfaction, improved patient engagement, streamlined operational costs, and stronger regulatory compliance.
For more information on developing an effective enterprise imaging strategy, download the Logicalis imaging data sheet at http://ow.ly/KHr6E. We also invite you to read our eBook: “EIMA Solutions Needed Stat” at http://ow.ly/KHrNt.