Mobile medical images challenge PACS administrators

The growing use of tablet devices and mobile phones by doctors for viewing medical images, pose a number of challenges for PACS administrators. Dr. David Hirschorn, is the director of radiology informatics at Staten Island University Hospital, N.Y. and a researcher in radiology informatics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. He is also a member of the American College of Radiology IT and Informatics Committee, serving as a representative to FDA for mobile medical devices. He was a featured speaker at the Sept. 10 NY Medical Imaging Informatics symposium. PARCA E-News spoke to him, by cell phone (of course) to ask about these challenges.

Q. How did you become interested in medical imaging on mobile devices?
A. I’m a radiologist who researches  displays. For years I’ve looked at what we really need in order to read an x-ray or a CT scan. They make medical displays that are a lot more expensive than consumer displays.

Integrating imaging with EHRs through the Cloud

In advance of next month’s Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) 2012 annual meeting, PARCA talked with K. Thomas Pickard of PACSGEAR. At SIIM, PACSGEAR  is announcing an upgrade to its popular MediaWriter technology to offer cloud-based open image exchange. In just 10 years PACSGEAR technology has been adopted by one in three U.S.hospitals. Thomas currently serves as PACSGEAR’s vice president of Marketing and Business Development. Previously he held roles at Emageon, eMed Technologies, and Thinking Machines. Thomas has an MBA from St. Mary’s College of California and has been working in healthcare IT for over 15 years.

Q. For those who may not be familiar with PACSGEAR, what do you do?

PACSGEAR essentially does two things: connect images to PACS and integrate them with EHRs. A new area of interest to your readers is the open image exchange.

PACS News Roundup

EMR use critical for documenting workflows 

Heart Rhythm Society Scientific Sessions
BOSTON – May 9, 2012 – It is critical to document workflows and develop a feasible adoption timeline when attempting to use EMRs to assist with pain points, stated Fred M. Kusumoto, MD, of the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville Electrophysiology and Pacing Services in Jacksonville, Fla., on May 9 during the 33rd annual scientific sessions of the Heart Rhythm Society. (More)

Medical imaging incident reporting system could boost patient safety

PHILADELPHIA – May 7, 2012 – From doctors who don't follow imaging protocols to hospitals that cut radiology staffing corners to save money, the dangers of radiation overexposure continue to dog healthcare. Researchers writing in the May edition of the Journal of the American College of Radiology said the healthcare system could improve radiation safety with a national incident reporting system for medical imaging. (More)

Opinion

RIS/PACS integration issues when performing multi-modality studies

When using a RIS, PACS and a voice recognition or traditional transcription reporting system from different vendors, many institutions are having integration issues with mapping the orders to the performed studies and resulting reports. These scenarios are well documented as part of the IHE scheduled workflow profiles; however, not every system is fully compliant with the information model, which covers the relationship between the orders, studies and reports.  (From time to time individually written articles that have been reviewed by the Advisory board of PARCA that are relevant to improving patient outcomes, workflow and productivity will be included in the PARCA Newsletter.) (More)

AHA blasted for 'Hail Mary pass' on meaningful use

WASHINGTON – May 03, 2012 – No sooner had the American Hospital Association submitted its comments on the proposed rule for Stage 2 meaningful use than they came under fire for "spurious" arguments on patient access to online information. “We know from the last two years of public debate on meaningful use that the association has really pushed back hard on the requirement around giving patients access to their health information electronically,” Christine Bechtel, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, and a member of the federal Health IT Policy Committee, told Healthcare IT News. (More)

Hospital CIO survey shows connecting independents is priority

NEW JERSEY – April 25, 2012 – While a majority of hospital CIOs responding to a recent survey conducted by healthsystemCIO.com say they are participating in regional health or system-to-system information exchange efforts, they expressed disappointment with the slow and inconsistent progress.Twenty percent of respondents said that adoption rates have been disappointing, citing limited interest by providers and resource constraints as key factors, while just 17 percent noted that they’ve had a high degree of success. (More)

Leading Views

PACS Cloud Computing

Q & A with Alan Schweitzer,
CTO Radiology Consulting Group

Cloud computing, is it just the latest tech buzzword du jour? Or is it here to stay? Whatever it is, it continues to be a hot topic at conferences, and some of the computing industry’s biggest players are moving into it, but what exactly is it? And what does it offer the PACS community if anything? To find out, we talked with Alan Schweitzer, Chief Technology Officer for the Radiology Consulting Group, and the Imaging Business Development Group at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is an expert in PACS and voice recognition strategic planning, networking and radiology information systems.

Q. What is cloud computing as it pertains to PACS?

A. In my mind it is having the IT infrastructure (hardware and software) at a data center that is not physically co-located where the primary users are. It is typically provided by a third party, so the users don’t own the technology, they rent it. 

PACS News Roundup

PACSGEAR ramps up for PACS 2.0

Solutions evolve to connect medical images from departments outside radiology

PLEASANTON, Calif., Sep 28, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- PACSGEAR, the leading provider of imaging connectivity for electronic health records, today announced an expanded strategy to combine medical images from all departments with electronic health records. The "PACS 2.0" initiative is the evolution of medical image connectivity to include integration with the electronic health record. In the past year, PACSGEAR has successfully integrated over 500,000 medical studies outside of radiology, and can now deliver integrated solutions that capture, view and share medical images and results across the enterprise. (More)


RSNA's Image Share project hopes to repeat DICOM success

Sept. 15, 2011 -- In the late 1990s, radiology societies helped encourage vendor adoption of the DICOM 3.0 standard, a milestone that ultimately sparked a revolution in digital image management. Now, RSNA hopes its Image Share project will do the same for the nascent field of image sharing. (More)

DICOM Grid to FASTech 50 List of Most Innovative Technology Start-Ups

PHOENIX, AZ, Sep 15, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) – DICOM Grid, provider of a cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for medical imaging applications, today announced it has been named to VentureWire's FASTech 50 list of the most innovative technology start-ups. DICOM Grid was selected from a pool of hundreds of venture-backed companies by the editors of Dow Jones VentureWire and a board of leading venture capitalists. (More)

Developing Integration: a Real Opportunity for Vendors in the European CIS Market

LONDON, Sept. 14 2011 – Healthcare facilities in Europe are currently working to create a unified digital patient record. In tandem, medical imaging vendors are developing and offering cardiology information systems (CIS) with advanced functionalities and easy integration capabilities with enterprise-wide information systems. As a result of such trends, image management-based information systems are set to witness revenue growth. (More)


Cloud-based service streamlines quicker image sharing for hospital

NEW YORK, Sept. 1, 2011 — Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y., has begun using a cloud-based service to share medical images among multiple physicians without entering them into the healthcare system's picture archiving and communication system (PACS), according to an article in InformationWeek. (More)