Medical Imaging Blog

Healthcare IT

Medical Imaging Transforms Patient Care in Ireland

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Hospitals in the United States and Canada are not the only countries moving quickly into the digital world. Ireland represents the latest to embrace medical imaging on a national scale. With the new National Integrated Medical Imaging System (NIMIS), the delivery of health care services is more informed and more connected than ever.

Each of us accumulates a number of medical records based on hospital encounters, doctor’s visits, x-rays and other medical images. No matter what the care setting, caregivers need unrestrained access to a patient’s complete medical record.

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Medical Imaging Key to Collapsing Health Information Silos

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Medical Imaging Silos“Medical imaging is a cornerstone to the ability to create a fluid care continuum,” said Shawn McKenzie, healthcare consultant. Her presentation, August 13, 2012, at the 40th annual meeting of the Association for Medical Imaging Management (AHRA) highlighted how medical imaging software will lead the way toward breaking down health information silos.

Before recent health care reform, competition created silos in healthcare due to the “scarcity paradigm,” she notes. Today, technology, public sentiment and integrated care are demanding change. Tools now exist, like enterprise medical imaging that can handle large volumes of data. A high-level information exchange between provider and provider is a reality.

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Vendor-Neutral Medical Imaging Means Solid Industry Growth

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Medical ArchivesVendor neutral archives (VNAs) and enterprise imaging repositories are generating increasingly higher profits in the medical imaging sector. According to a study by global growth partnership and research firm, Frost & Sullivan, the VNA market earned revenues of $110.5 million in 2011 and estimates this to reach $210.0 million by 2018.

The study also states that the enterprise picture archiving and communication system (PACS) market, comprised primarily of existing PACS vendors, earned revenues of $77.4 million in 2011 and projects growth of $168.2 million by 2018.

Imaging Informatics a Substantial Growth Segment

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Mobile Solutions for a Modern Hospital

McKesson Mobile Leading the healthcare technology trends for 2013 are mobile devices. Hospitals benefit from technologies that allow physicians to do work on-the-go. McKesson understands this benefit and has a new solution in its Horizon Patient Folder™ product line that helps hospitals decrease deficient records.

Speed Up Deficiency Completion

This new technology provides doctors and hospitals a mobile advantage with the ability to complete documentation across wireless platforms, including iPhone®, iPad® and iPod touch® devices.

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Case Study: Electrophysiology Module Helps Boost Physician Satisfaction At Cooper University Hospital

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Cooper Hospital As with many hospital systems, managing silos of information has become burdensome and time consuming. Lack of integration and automation are two of the biggest challenges in the modern healthcare setting. Cooper University Hospital recognized that they needed to tie together a number of areas seamlessly and provide a more holistic view of the patient.

Jeff Paschell, integration manager for Cardiovascular Services at Cooper University Hospital, acknowledged the disconnect between departments and that “physician adoption, physician satisfaction and report turnaround time (TAT) were not where we wanted them to be” as a result.

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Protecting Your Medical Imaging Data from Disaster

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Protecting Medical Imaging Data

For millennia, the only avenue a doctor had to look inside the body was to cut a patient open. Then, on November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen noticed an image cast from his cathode ray generator.

A week later, Rontgen took a photograph of his wife’s hand, which showed her wedding ring and her bones. Rontgen named this new form of radiation, X-radiation (X standing for Unknown.) This was the beginning of x-rays and radiology.

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Case Study: Affordable Medical Imaging Helps Improve Patient Care At Davis Health System

Patient Care As the U.S. economy improves – but continues to feel the financial impact of unemployment – hospitals are particularly challenged with both changes to health insurance coverage and the economic hardship of their constituents. Today, more than ever, affordable medical imaging that meets the business needs of the future has become a key driver in patient outcomes and return on investment.

No hospital knows this better than the Davis Health System in rural West Virginia, an area hit hard by the recession, and the focus of a recent McKesson case study we published.

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Emergency Department Crowding Portends a Worrying Trend

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Emergency Department Staff Although emergency department (ED) visits increased 140% over eight years, medical imaging had a smaller net effect on overcrowding than other diagnostic tests and clinical procedures, according to research published in the July 2012 issue of Annals of Emergency Medicine, and reported by Cardiovascular Business. Stephen Pitts, M.D., MPH, of the department of emergency medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues evaluated trends in ED crowding and potential causes by analyzing trends in ED occupancy.

While the results showed that imaging tests were less prevalent than other diagnostics, the researchers warned hospitals that their results have ominous implications for patient safety.

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Medical Imaging Improvements Support Quality Care & Enhance Patient Experiences

Quality Patient Care ABC News reports:

“In the ICU at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., they are using smaller needles to prevent unnecessary pain. And if a patient needs a loving hand to hold to get through the pinch, their relatives will be there morning, noon and night. The ICU has made limited visiting hours a thing of the past.”

“At City of Hope, a cancer treatment facility in Duarte, Calif., patients helped guide construction of its new Helford Clinical Research Hospital. The intention was to ensure that the patient perspective was considered and to create a more “home-like” environment.”

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Echocardiography Testing Recommendations for Asymptomatic Patients

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Medical Imaging Testing

Although exercise echocardiography testing could identify high-risk patients, researchers advised caution when recommending revascularization (RSV) because it does not indicate improved patient outcomes. This is especially problematic for asymptomatic patients, according to Serge C. Harb, M.D., of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Heart and Vascular Institute, and colleagues because early testing is of indeterminate value.

“Early testing” is defined as testing conducted less than two years after angioplasty, or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and five years after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.

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