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

Larger Role for Informatics and IT Pushing PACS Administrators

The evolution of healthcare technology in the U.S. is pushing PACS administrators to rapidly adapt to the growing role of information technology in healthcare, as data from specialists need to be integrated with hospital systems and beyond. In a RSNA 2011 session titled "Radiology Informatics: Fundamentals for the Future," Keith Dreyer, DO, vice chairman of radiology computing and information sciences at Massachusetts General Hospital, discussed quality mandates surrounding image interpretation, reporting and access and how informatics and IT will play an ever larger role in the future of radiology. Dr. Dreyer elaborated on his vision of that future in a Q&A for the PARCA e-newsletter.

Q. In your RSNA session you talked about a “new age for radiology,” can you briefly describe that new world?

As patient centric initiatives such as the CMS Meaningful Use program take hold in radiology our services (and subsequently our IT systems) will need to expand beyond the wall of the department or imaging center.  Even beyond our provider enterprise to integrate to other care providers and patients themselves.  Currently, PACS systems are silos providing merely an electronic version of film with limited communication capabilities.  RIS systems are also inward facing and do little to provide meaningful interactive communication beyond the department to our ordering clinicians and our patients.  In a patient centric world, our systems provide very little other than to serve as limited edge devices for EHRs and PHRs.

PACS News Roundup

Bill would smooth medical licensing for telehealth
Feb. 7, 2012 – A bill expected to be introduced in Congress this year aims to make it easier to use medical licenses across state lines. As reported by Auntminnie.com the bill will create a comprehensive and interoperable database of verified physician credentials that would provide a tandem state/national license that would allow physicians to provide telehealth services in states accepting the tandem license. Currently each state requires its own license to practice medicine within its borders. The system complicates and hinders use of technology to deliver health care more efficiently in some cases via telehealth technology. (Read more)

Case study documents benefits of implementing PACS
Feb. 2, 2012 – Double-digit gains in productivity and efficiency were the results of a system-wide implementation of a PACS for the University Hospitals Case Medical Center (UHCMC) in Cleveland, according to a case study published in the February issue of Academic Radiology (requires subscription).  As reported by HealthImaging.com, the study showed that following the full implementation in 2009, radiology exam volume doubled from 269,750 in 2003 to 722,661 in 2010. The reduction in film use saved $3.2 million, and turnaround times were cut from 80 hours in 2002 to 20 hours in 2010. (Read more)

Is DICOM a non-standard standard?
Jan. 31, 2012 – Dr. John D. Halamka, set off a spirited debate with a blogpost stating that DICOM is a non-standard standard. As chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School and chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network his opinion is highly regarded, and his opinion opened up a lively discussion of the DICOM standard. Members may want to weigh in on the discussion. (Read 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)