November 27, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
With the world of radiological practice changing rapidly, James Whitfill, M.D., CMIO of Scottsdale Medical Imaging in Arizona, sees successful radiologist practices as being driven first by business strategy, with IT tools facilitating a shift towards value-based payment systems
November 27, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
Keith J. Dreyer, M .D. not only sees the future of automation-facilitated radiology practice; he has been instrumental in bringing clinical decision support tools to the radiologist masses nationwide. In a frank discussion with HCI's Mark Hagland, Dr. Dreyer shares his perspectives on where radiology practice is going, and what radiologists-and healthcare IT leaders-need to understand about the near future in healthcare.
November 26, 2012 Mark Hagland
blog
Meeting this morning during RSNA 2012 with executives from the Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare, one thing was clear: those patient care organizations with an imaging informatics strategy—perhaps almost any imaging informatics strategy??—are already light years ahead of their peer organizations whose senior executives have no such strategy.
November 26, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
Intermountain Healthcare, a Salt Lake City-based healthcare system with 22 hospitals, recently announced it signed a multi-year contract with Siemens Healthcare (Malvern, Pa.) for $11.7 million to improve upon the system’s enterprise-wide imaging system. The agreement will allow Intermountain to deploy a vendor neutral archive from Siemens, which will allow images of multiple modalities to be stored in a Dell data center and managed with Dell’s clinical data management software.
November 26, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
A recent report from the Orem, Utah-based KLAS Research, indicates that as the market for picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) grows, providers are looking for vendors that can rapidly improve in the middle of a changing industry. The report, Radiology PACS Technology: The World Looks Under the Covers, looks at various PACS-related feedback from customers and finds the top vendors are those who can offer “meaningful and timely upgrades with expanded usability.”
November 20, 2012 Joe Marion
blog
Well, it’s almost that time again! The annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) is the largest radiology meeting of the year, and typically the place where vendors tend to introduce new technology. This year should be no exception, and it should address some interesting areas as both technology users and vendors cope with a changing healthcare regulatory environment.
October 23, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
A new report from the Reston, Va.-based medical imaging socioeconomic research organization, the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute, found that in hospitals across the United States, the average length-of-stay has increased at the same time as use of medical imaging scans has declined. The report’s authors do not outright say the two are connected, but suggest more research be done to “potential negative impact of government and private insurer imaging reductions on overall medical costs and patient safety.”
October 22, 2012 Joe Marion
blog
Another year is rapidly drawing to a close. But, before the year-end holidays there is that “little” event in Chicago after Thanksgiving called the RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) annual meeting (http://rsna.org/Annual_Meeting.aspx). For anyone who has attended, they will know that it is a huge event that is next to impossible to cover despite spanning almost a week. I am trying to put together my “wish list” for what I need to see this year.
October 18, 2012 Gabriel Perna
news
According a new report from the Orem, Utah-based research firm, KLAS, cardiology IT providers are still in search of the “holy grail of integration, functionality, and comprehensive modules.” The report, Cardiology IT 2012: Fitting the Pieces Together, looked at the insights of more than 570 providers, and found that certain vendors (McKesson, Merge, Philips, and Siemens) have done better in fitting providers’ needs than others, but none are perfect.
October 1, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
A new digital technology has been developed by researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine to allow unaffiliated institutions to transfer medical images, thus avoiding the hassle of CDs. Could the PCARE system offer a model for others to follow?
September 21, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
Imaging was largely absent in Stage 1 meaningful use, but with new requirements in Stage 2 to include viewing of image data within the EHR, there will likely be a new focus to develop enterprise imaging strategies and expand interoperability solutions. The picture in this space isn’t as clear as some might hope, but there are pioneering organizations nonetheless making headway to allow anytime, anywhere access to diagnostic images.
September 19, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
blog
With new imaging requirements in Stage 2 meaningful use, IT departments are going to have to start the arduous task of integrating imaging into clinical workflows. It's apt that more organizations will be following a path similar to UPMC, which is successfully federating multiple imaging archives into a more "patient-centric" view, where all images are pulled together in one federated diagnostic image repository, called SingleView.
