As a pervasive problem in healthcare, it may come as no surprise that a lack of IT interoperability is a huge barrier to enterprise-wide image viewing.
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For large, multi-site organizations, enterprise viewing — accessing images across an organization — is an issue that's become increasingly relevant as a growing number of healthcare organizations expand and consolidate. Unlike single-site hospitals, these organizations exist as continuums that incorporate numerous locations and types of care.
As a pervasive problem in healthcare, it may come as no surprise that a lack of IT interoperability is a huge barrier to enterprise-wide image viewing. Thankfully, some forward-thinking solution-providers in the field are taking technological integration problems head-on and overcoming the platform-based complications that hinder data sharing within the organization and among other entities.
For enterprise viewing, which encompasses both diagnostic and clinical viewing, a number of data sharing issues are directly related to healthcare organizations operating with legacy picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), which are limited in terms of scalability and information-sharing capabilities. For healthcare providers, a dated system generally leads to limited viewing abilities, discombobulated communication among colleagues, restricted image access points and hindered collaboration across the continuum, which can have a significant effect on patient care.
"To excel in today's market, healthcare providers are looking at enterprise viewing to ensure radiologists and physicians have rapid access to patient images and information that may be stored in various repositories across the enterprise," says Chris Henri, PhD, CTO and cofounder of Intelerad, a medical imaging solutions company. "This not only means access from their workstation, but also providing the same user experience when working remotely."
In addition to facilitating 24/7 coverage and improving access to subspecialty radiologists, providing remote viewing access for radiologists allows healthcare organizations to easily expand operations by allowing for diagnostic viewers to easily be deployed to new locations and having them communicate with a central archive for patient images and information. On the physician side, providing remote access – from within or outside the organization's walls — means they can view sophisticated images quicker, and thus provide diagnoses in less time.
A commonality among products and solutions that enable high-performance enterprise viewing, such as those from Intelerad, is that they are web-based. In fact, the benefits of a web-based solution are numerous. For example, Intelerad's Enterprise Viewing solution provides a single worklist and viewer, so clinicians — including the radiologist and any other relevant caregiver — can access images anywhere, any time. In addition, Intelerad's web-based model:
· Provides rapid access to patient exams (including priors) and information stored in existing archives (PACS, RIS, HIS, VNA)
· Image-enables the hospital’s EMR
· Rapidly displays images regardless of location or bandwidth
· Provides the same user interface and experience from any location
· Improves collaboration with radiologists and support staff through integrated communications tools
· Allows radiologists to track critical results
· Incorporates a site-wide licensing model that allows for easy, economical, hospital-wide deployments to specialists who demand a diagnostic viewer
· Includes integrated modules and tool sets that allow subspecialists to read from a single workstation and remotely read for their specialty
In addition, Intelerad's universal clinical viewer allows clinicians to use any browser to access patient images from the device of their choice, so they are always ready to meet with a patient or review patient data.
"With Intelerad's universal viewer, there is no need to download and install software or keep it in-sync across an enterprise. It's familiar, safe and trusted technology. All updates are applied on the back end, and all users get the benefit immediately. And, web browsers are less intimidating to users than other applications," says Mr. Henri. "We and others in the industry have developed solutions for clinicians around the hospital that are user- friendly and familiar. They are simple to operate, and they work rapidly, no matter where the user is coming from."
Using a web-based image viewing solution comes back to better patient care. Through improved image viewing capabilities, clinicians can expedite and improve diagnostic processes, improve information transfer, enhance clinician-to-clinician communication and boost collaborative patient care efforts.
"Rather than operating islands of PACS, the idea is to provide unified access to all repositories and facilitate scaling for larger organizations across wide networks, which is something we have developed strength in over the years," says Mr. Henri.