by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | April 13, 2015
From the April 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Activities this past year included ongoing work with the SIIM Hackathon, the HIMSSSIIM Working Group, the SIIM Webinar Series, and more. What stands out for me as the most significant achievement of this past year has been an infrastructure change, more of a “nuts and bolts” type of achievement.
SIIM’s new website was launched in January, and is delivered from a platform that provides much more capability compared to the former platform. This new platform is designed to support increased networking amongst our members and the entire imaging informatics community by providing tools that support collaboration. New tools include the ability to create blogs on the SIIM website, and share posted content easily on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.
The idea is to provide tools to our membership that allow for the sharing of information using a variety of delivery mechanisms, so as to reach the largest audience. The ultimate goal is create an active eCommunity that is available to imaging informatics professionals throughout the year. Everyone who attends the annual meeting knows that one of its strengths is the networking and knowledge sharing that occurs during the meeting. SIIM is striving to provide a similar experience throughout the year.
HCBN: Are there any major projects or initiatives the society is currently working on?
DB: The current collaboration between HIMSS and SIIM is very exciting. The HIMSS/ SIIM Workgroup on enterprise imaging is examining the current and future needs of enterprise imaging informatics. The workgroup is focused on bringing awareness about the importance of imaging within healthcare IT, as well as to identify the best use of imaging and imaging information at the enterprise level. An examination of how best to image-enable the EMR is one example of the work being done by this group.
The SIIM 2014 Hackathon was a success last year, and is part of the SIIM 2015 and 2016 programs. The Hackathon provided an opportunity for participants to code using new standards, specifically HL7 FHIR and DICOMWebRESTful services. SIIM is examining how best to provide this coding opportunity year-round. The idea is that any developer who would like to test code that is using the new standards, particularly DICOMWeb, will have an independent API platform available for testing.
The SIIM Webinar Series is also very exciting. There have been three webinars to-date. Speakers for the webinars were doctors Paul Chang, Eliot Siegel, and George Shih. Webinars include a Tweet chat so that participants can contribute during the webinar, or ask questions. The webinars have been well attended and received good reviews from the attendees. Look for more webinars throughout 2015.There is a strong lineup of speakers scheduled.
