Top 10 Tech Trends: A More Patient-Centric View of Imaging

“The bane of radiologists’ existence is trying to get their hands on studies done elsewhere,” says Jerry Edson, a consultant on the project and the former CIO of the Maine Medical Center (Portland). “They have handled this by burning CDs and handing them to patients to carry around. This solution completely eliminates that problem, and provides a very robust solution for them in terms of business continuity and disaster recovery, something that many radiology centers may not have been doing a great job of.”

Users will have two ways to access the images: through the HIE portal or directly through their own PACS application.

HealthInfoNet estimates that Maine healthcare providers will save a total of $6 million over seven years through a reduction of distributed-image storage and transport costs. “That is one of the benefits of group buying,” Edson says.

Likewise, the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) has partnered with SeeMyRadiology.com to roll out ImageZone,  a cloud-based image-sharing solution.  “IHIE already delivers most of the radiology reports in the state, so we see this as a natural progression,” says Joan Callahan, the ImageZone product manager.  The project is still in the rollout and provider education stage, she adds. “If we do get traction, we will look at integrating this service with those radiology reports. In our research, radiologists told us that in 18 percent of cases, they would like access to relevant prior imaging. We’d like to turn that into an ‘Easy Button’ that tells them there are earlier images of their patient in ImageZone they can request.”

With so much changing so fast, UPMC’s Shrestha warns against falling too easily for technology hype. “Buzzwords like cloud or mobile tend to confuse people who might make decisions that are expensive yet make things more difficult for themselves,” he says. “You really have to focus on what could be the benefits from embracing a mobile platform. You have to build it for a specific purpose rather than just because it is popular.”