Sharing Images Across a Community

What kinds of lessons have been learned so far around image-sharing strategy development?

Devin Matthews: What we learned was that images were a very distinct part of the physicians’ workflow; and creating an environment with ready access, especially remote access—we made it available to them where they wanted. And knowing that images were at the top of their priority list, and we worked on that first—we learned to listened to the physicians and what they wanted.

Bailey: I would say that the growth in image sophistication is the single biggest trend in this area in medicine. So for physicians, imaging is far more valuable for completing the diagnostic process than many other forms of data. That’s across the board, and is probably one of the single biggest areas of rising costs for Medicare has been for imaging.

So the technology has advanced so rapidly and significantly, that imaging has become a core part of the diagnostic process, then?

Bailey: Absolutely.

Cummings: And to be honest, when we first looked at this and listened to our physicians, most people were starting out with general results- sharing and notes-sharing; but the thing is, if we don’t have a lab test result readily available, we can repeat that lab test, and yes, someone might have to be stuck with a needle a second time. But when you look at the issue of concern around re-radiating patients, that emerged as an important safety issue. And I’m glad that the physicians pushed that issue for us, because this was the right thing to do.

Might your advice to CIOs and CMIOs be, then, that you’d encourage other organizations to do this in the order you’ve done it?

Cummings: If that’s what the need is in the community, then, yes. And I think this sequencing really encouraged information exchange in the community.

Matthews: To be honest with you, we looked at 60 days, end to end from when we started, until the time it came up, and it came up smoothly. And we were able to connect five PACS systems seamlessly in a federated model.

Cummings: And that’s been one of the great pieces about Merge; Merge is more of an integrating technology. Obviously, they have PACS systems, and one of our primary partners in this exchange uses Merge for their PACS. But with their domain expertise, Merge is able to provide a true virtual integration of our images across the community.