From the May 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Physicians use the viewer to access reports and images from a variety of browsers and device platforms including tablets and laptops. This equips them to review patient information during hospital visits or from remote locations — quickly and securely. It enables timely treatment decisions and allows physicians to display and discuss diagnostic images during patient consultations.
As part of this conversion, we transitioned from a RIS-driven workflow to a PACS-driven workflow and replaced a proprietary archive with a vendor-neutral archive. We migrated two years of radiology PACS data for the launch of the new platform and then integrated catheterization studies from a separate archive. We also plan to migrate echocardiography studies into the enterprise imaging platform.
A virtualized architecture with blade servers delivers greater scalability and redundancy while lowering data center costs and enhancing performance. It also provides a production and backup system in two different locations to deliver redundancy and disaster recovery.
In the past many hospitals, including ours, opted to install best-of-breed solutions from multiple suppliers. We discovered that linking disparate systems involves complex interfaces and integrations that increase costs. As we planned this conversion, our team decided to find one supplier that offered excellence in enterprise image management, voice recognition and workstation features, as well as archiving and image sharing with onsite and offsite providers. Our evaluation team included the hospital’s IT staff, radiology management and key technologists as well as the radiology group that serves our patients.
We viewed onsite demonstrations from eight vendors over a six-month period and rated each supplier’s capabilities in each area. In the end, our team unanimously selected one vendor.
We are proud of the advantages we achieved through these upgrades that include:
• Enhanced diagnostic tools, including advanced visualization tools for radiologists;
• A universal viewer that delivers secure access to imaging studies and reports on physicians’ mobile devices;
• Upgraded diagnostic workstation hardware that allows radiologists to read more efficiently and deliver faster response times — which can enable timely diagnosis and treatment for patients;
• An enterprise imaging architecture that delivers excellent scalability and redundancy while enhancing performance and lowering costs.
About the author: John Wiggins is the IT technical services manager at Marion General Hospital in Marion, Ind.Back to HCB News
