Imaging Informatics and the Enterprise

Pioneering organizations, like Shrestha’s UPMC, have stayed ahead of the industry by creating their own type of image-archiving platform. UPMC’s Singleview solution federates multiple imaging archives (UPMC has 12 PACS systems in radiology alone) into a more “patient-centric” view, where all of their images are pulled together in one place. Even with certain things that need to be addressed, like integrating imaging from various other departments, Shrestha says SingleView has become a broad platform that UPMC can use to “enterprise enable its imaging strategy.”

Over the next few years, as healthcare organizations strategize forward on diagnostic image sharing and storage, Marion says success will depend on organizations determining their own specific needs. His advice going forward for CIOs and healthcare IT leaders is before they sit down and accept a vendor-based solution, is to hammer out basics such as finding a repository that can interact with their EMR, as well as, figuring out how many service areas they have, the objects they are dealing with, and the requirements they have. “Then you can start to zero in on specifics with service areas and vendors,” he says.