To understand the significance of ICIS enterprise imaging, one must first appreciate a key challenge that many clinicians face, in spite of the mandated, growing use of EHRs.
This content is sponsored by Agfa HealthCare.
Agfa HealthCare's ICIS (imaging clinical imformation system) imaging platform does not cure disease, repair broken bones or perform surgical procedures. However, what it offers to patient-centric healthcare is a breakthrough that compares with the latest advances in medical information technology.
ICIS is an enterprise and regional imaging platform that allows any medical professional within a health system to create, collaborate, exchange and manage a patient's visual medical history using the clinical context of the electronic health record. ICIS integrates with most any image-generating device, providing specialized workflows to a wide variety of disciplines to capture, index and store visual health information.
As a result, ICIS enables clinicians to have a greater comprehension of the patient condition, supporting fast, confident diagnoses and helps increase operational efficiencies.
To understand the significance of ICIS enterprise imaging, one must first appreciate a key challenge that many clinicians face, in spite of the mandated, growing use of EHRs. The modern hospital enterprise is a dynamic and complex environment where patient care is often managed by an array of healthcare specialists from numerous departments. Observational and diagnostic data, such as blood pressure and medical history, are standard shared information and are the foundation of the traditional EHR.
However, in many healthcare settings, medical images, such as funduscopy, X-rays, and digital images taken during wound or dermatology care, and perioperative surgical photographs, are only viewable by the physician or department that acquired them. Besides the lost opportunity for clinical collaboration, images stored outside the enterprise infrastructure may represent a compliance risk. Digital images taken with an "untethered" camera may or may not be documented as a billable activity within the EHR, which may cause lost potential revenue for the facility. Siloed images may lead other care providers to order more or redundant studies.
The existing imaging environment is inefficient and costly. More importantly, lack of a centralized imaging platform potentially delays the diagnosis and treatment plan by preventing clinicians from having a comprehensive view of the patient's medical condition along the entire continuum of care. Without access, a care provider's ability to understand a patient's full story can be compromised.
How is ICIS changing the patient care landscape?
The increasing adoption of EHRs and health information exchanges presents hospitals and health systems with the opportunity to adopt an ICIS strategy to offer the same accessibility of images as other patient information, supporting physician-to-physician collaboration and strengthening evidential support for decision making.
ICIS was designed to help organizations turn patient imaging into an enterprise-wide strategic asset. ICIS provides a scalable platform for accessing medical images and imaging information throughout the health system with the click of a button. ICIS unifies patient records by integrating and linking multi-facility, multi-departmental and multi-specialty imaging data.
The benefits are massive. By providing a comprehensive view of a patient's medical history, ICIS simultaneously supports the care a medical institution can provide while significantly advancing the efficiency and cost effectiveness of how that care is administered.
In doing so, Agfa HealthCare is empowering health systems with the means to re-imagine the value of medical images, both in the near term as a treatment tool and as a long-range opportunity to create efficiencies and save expenses through all phases of care.
Visual healthcare — for good
Revenue pressures from reimbursement reform are driving consolidation of images into archives, known as vendor-neutral archives. Healthcare reform incentives are pushing providers to utilize EHR technology to make patient records accessible to help decrease costs and improve care. Although not yet mandated, the inclusion of imaging as a component of Meaningful Use criteria is making an enterprise imaging strategy increasingly unavoidable.
Yet not all imaging strategies deliver the same results. The ICIS platform provides a comprehensive set of services. Whether beginning with ICIS' departmental point-of-care image acquisition, VNA or EHR universal viewing services, having the right infrastructure provides present and future operational efficiencies to support quality clinical care. Informed care, efficient workflows, cross-enterprise cost reduction — Agfa HealthCare's ICIS opens up a whole new world of visual healthcare.
To learn more, please contact AgfaHealthCareAmericas@agfa.com.