Reimagining Health at HIMSS22

You could feel the energy and excitement at the 2022HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition(HIMSS22) held this March in Orlando. Just weeks before the conference began, Florida lifted its mask mandate, so it almost felt — dare we say — like pre-COVID days. HIMSS22 did have a health and safety protocol in place, which was developed with due consideration for prevailing public health guidance, legal guidelines and industry practices.

The conference brought together nearly 29,000 attendees in Orlando and on HIMSS22 Digital, for the latest in education, offering around 300 general education sessions, as well as plenty of innovation and collaboration, all in keeping with the theme of “Reimagine Health.” More than 1,000 exhibiting companies filled the exhibit hall of the Orange County Convention Center, where they showcased cutting-edge technology, presented innovative products and services, and held more than 250 education sessions on the show floor. In addition, the global health conference helped generate $102 million in economic impact for greater Orlando, according to the show’s producers.

Key themes at this year’s conference centered around staff shortages and related burnout, digital transformation, subscription models, efficiency, streamlined workflow, disruption, imaging convergence and doing more with less. Here is a recap of how some of the top exhibitors in the imaging technology space addressed these trends at HIMSS22.

Digital Transformation

飞利浦HealthSuite互操作性是一个完全集成的、支持云的健康IT平台，可以满足整个映像企业的各种工作流需求。

During an international media roundtable at HIMSS22,Roy Jakobs, chief business leader of connected care atPhilips，强调医疗保健信息学已深入嵌入飞利浦提供的每一项服务或解决方案。To help organize the needed deliverables, Jakobs bucketed the solutions into three major themes:

• Greater insights.Leveraging the power ofAI and analyticsto connect multiple data sources to provide clinical and operational decision support, turning disparate data into actionable insights.

• Greater coordination.Extending care delivery by integrating innovative solutions into a connected, collaborative care ecosystem for better coordination inside and outside the hospital.

•更优化。Enabling new ways of working and optimizing existing workflows to drive continuous improvements that lead to greater operational efficiency and quality care delivery.

Jakobs explained howPhilips Healthcare Informaticspulls these together, and provides support throughout the care continuum through its cloud, platforms and SaaS; AI, analytics and intelligence; cybersecurity and data privacy; and interoperability.

雅各布斯解释说:“首先是我们如何通过我们的信息学解决方案，提供更深刻的见解，利用AI的力量，将来自多个资源的数据集汇集在一起，然后提供临床和运营决策支持，将不同的数据转化为可操作的见解。”“第二个大问题是，如果你有这些数据集，你如何以一种有意义的方式使用这些数据，实际上实现更大的协调;通过将创新解决方案整合到连接和协作的护理生态系统中，扩展护理服务。换句话说，利用数据让生态系统中的人更无缝地工作。”

The third bucket harnesses these actionable insights and enhanced coordination to optimize the system. “So, great optimizations are all about how you have new ways of working and optimizing existing workflows, right continuous improvements that lead to greater operational efficiency and quality care delivery,” stated Jakobs, adding that Philips delivers these solutions through itsPhilips Health Suite, which was featured at HIMSS22.

“What we’re hearing across our customer set is that they need a secure data repository that is actually built for a healthcare environment, can deal with the legal and regulatory requirements, and is flexible to work with,” Jakobs explained. “That is built out of multiple components. We have cloud platforms and SaaS that is actually attached to it and enables the data to flow seamlessly. If you have the data that are unlocked, you can actually put AI analytics and intelligence on that. We do that for specific domain solutions, like graph and radiology, or like we have in ICU management, but you can also put it over a suite of solutions to actually optimize for operations management.”

Jakobs shared that one of the biggest themes being discussed at HIMSS22 is system security: “There’s an increasing level of attacks that our systems have to deal with, and they feel exposed,” he said. “So how can we make sure that the whole environment is secure? That actually puts a next level of requirements through systems and solutions that we provide.”

Interoperability也在HIMSS22的对话中发挥了关键作用。“你不是在自己的筒仓里操作。你需要确保你的解决方案是客户和供应商生态系统的一部分，并且它无缝地集成了来自其他设备和其他玩家的数据。实际上，结合起来，系统可以以最有意义的方式操作这些数据。”

Transforming Products with Subscription Models

Matt Vigar, vice president of marketing and sales at Elekta, discussed how the company is moving into a more cloud based platform, as well as subscription services.

Elektaalso talked aboutdigital transformationat HIMSS22. “In the last four months, we’ve really started to focus a lot on how we are changing the way of what we are doing. We will be undergoing a digital transformation,” said Matt Vigar, vice president of marketing and sales at Elekta. ”So, moving toward cloud-based services, we partnered with Microsoft. We choseAzure Cloudwhen we moved toward really focusing on this concept, and the fact that we’ve started to build an ecosystem. We’ve also started to partner with some external companies.”

Vigar said that Elekta is also trying to group together its different informatics into more of a software as aservice subscription model, away from the kind of traditional software, so that it can provide more tools to its customers. “We’ve moved into this kind of software as a service. It’s really all about how we can transform the way that we present the products and groups,” he explained. “What we’ve done is basically build four different products, with a focus around functionality. So, what our customers would like and kind of stepping up in complexity what we can do, but moving from sort of a basic setup where everything is getting changed. They still get all of the great features that we have inMosaiq, but then they can also build off all of these new applications.”

Elekta is not alone, as many healthcare providers are moving from traditional software licenses to subscription-based models when procuring IT solutions. According toSectra, the main reasons are often an increased need for flexibility mapping costs to production volumes, to get easier access to a broader set of functionalities and to facilitate the move to enterprise imaging to include more “ologies” outside of radiology.

Sectra Oneprovides an enterprise imaging offering as a subscription, or as the company puts it, an “all-you-can-eat” business model that gives full access to the complete Sectra enterprise imaging portfolio, the latest releases, and all future developed features and functionalities within the contract length. It also maps costs to the level of utilization of the system, providing increased flexibility as volumes change.

“For any new feature, you get it and it’s very easy to add other ologies, and that’s really why we did it because some people still want to start with radiology, but then maybe also add cardiology, and it’s very easy to incorporate,” explained Andrea Sowitch, vice president of marketing at Sectra. “Because we do everything on the same platform, it’s really easy for us. It’s all on the same platform, and that makes sense.”

Sectra Oneis available on four separate tiers to fit organizational needs, and includes different bundles of suitable collections of software and functionality. The tiers can easily be switched when needs change.

Efficiency through Automation

At HIMSS22,Konica Minoltafocused on how to build efficiency into systems through automation. “What can you do with software, not even through automation, but how can you reduce the amount of time it takes to do something to make that task more efficient? You can do it by adding in automation for the end user or the software to become more efficient, which in turn benefits the practice or facility by becoming more efficient,” saidKevin Borden, vice president of product, healthcare IT at Konica Minolta.

Integrated into theExa Platform是一个新的工具，提供适当的使用标准(AUC)信息订购临床医生，并协助作出最适当的治疗决定，患者的具体临床情况。The tool is part of aClinical Decision Support Mechanism(CDSM) that fulfills the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) mandated use of it beginning Jan. 1, 2023. Orders placed through the Exa Physician Portal will automatically be validated electronically.

“We’re really moving forward to get ahead of the game withCDSM,” said Borden. “We’ve looked at many partners out there, and chosen those that really fit with our integration, and want to give that natural feel as a part of our application. So seamless integration is critical to be able to hit appropriate use criteria by ordering exams appropriately.”

Borden explained why it is so important to implement a CDSM solution with appropriate use criteria now. “CDSM is going to become mandatory in January 2023. And we’re giving customers the advantage of being ahead of that mandate so we can start implementing now,” explained Borden. “They don’t want to dip in volumes. They want to make sure once the mandate is there, that they can run smooth without any hiccups in their practice.”

Exa平台现在包括一个实时医疗保险和账单提交处理解决方案，无缝验证患者是否符合成像程序。它还为患者提供了他们在预约期间的自付费用的估计，以更有效和准确地获取这些付款。该平台由多个模块组成，包括RIS、PACS、账单和跨共享数据库的专业查看器，可以单独使用，也可以一起用于完整的企业映像体验。

Streamlined Workflow and App Integration

GE Healthcare’s Vscan Air Fleet Solutions help take the handheld ultrasound experience one step further with a suite of user-centric digital tools, as showcased at HIMSS22.

At HIMSS22,GE HealthcareintroducedEdison Digital Health Platform, a vendor-agnostic hosting and data aggregation platform with an integratedartificial intelligence(AI)引擎。GE表示，该平台的开发将使医院和医疗系统能够有效部署临床、工作流、分析和AI工具，这些工具将支持改善医疗服务，促进高效运营和增加收入增长，同时也支持减少IT负担，这通常伴随着在整个企业安装和集成应用程序。

Edison is designed to accelerate app integration by connecting devices and other data sources into an aggregated clinical data layer, said GE during theEdison Digital Health Platform launchon the HIMSS22 show floor. A collection of data transformation services is expected to be available on the platform to support data analytic applications, and to enable the training and deployment of AI models using the aggregated data. Through open and published interfaces, healthcare providers and third-party developers are expected to be able to seamlessly deploy their applications, with the platform supporting integration of the apps into existing workflows.

“Edison Digital Health Platform is being designed to enable healthcare systems to have a single platform on which to host and integrate apps into clinical workflows,” saidAmit Phadnis, chief digital officer, GE Healthcare. “With easy access to the workflow, analytics, and clinical apps specific to care across the care continuum, clinicians will have actionable insights at their fingertips to help better serve their patients.”

Leading the Disruption

Lead the Disruption wasCanon Medical’s theme this year at HIMSS22. “By lead the disruption, we mean there’s a lot of things within the enterprise imaging space and the PACS space, and we kind of were lucky enough to start with a new clean sheet of paper,” Jack Oblein, director of sales enablement, explained.

Oblein explained that Canon Medical doesn’t have a huge install base that it has to migrate and transition, so the overall design philosophy was roughly based along theONC guidelines. “What you are driving is the interoperability,” he said. “So, one of the primary themes with lead the disruption is just one of the premises of data neutrality, and making sure that you’re not doing things to data that might limit access to data, or limit the interoperability.”

他接着说，网络安全也是一个大问题。“For us, we’re very much into thezero-trust architecture, or ZTA,” he said. “Basically, it says once you’re in, we always still verify. Once you get in one portal, and now that you are through the firewall, you are free to go anywhere. Zero-trust architecture always verifies, so that helps you navigate. When we write data to disk, we write it in a way that’s resistant to a ransomware attack. The simple version of that is they can only see one case at a time. Also, you can’t delete the previous version. You can encrypt it, but you can’t get rid of the unencrypted. So there is no ransomware because you have access to that data.”

Image Convergence

Agfareleased a Harvard Business Review Briefing Paper,The Business Case for a Fully Converged Medical Imaging Platform.“我们赞助了《哈佛商业评论分析服务》的一项研究，研究技术和临床领导者如何通过改变他们的成像IT和流程来创造商业价值。”explained Miriam Ladin, director, marketing and communication, North America, forAgfa HealthCare. “Through in-depth interviews, this paper shares these leaders’ motivations and ongoing results as they endeavor to creative tangible business, clinical and operational impacts and help their systems grow and thrive.”

At HIMSS22, Agfa was encouraging attendees to view the report and “consider how technology might be a key to align the healthcare enterprise with pressing initiatives, such as increasing high-impact, data-driven care; moving away from the complexity of maintaining multiple and redundant systems; and creating secure, universal access to care documentation,” according to Ladin.

Doing More with Less

诊断成像、治疗。According toPeter Shen, head of digital health atSiemens Healthineers, digital connects all these pieces together.

“The providers today are really under pressure, and they are feeling challenged. They are asked to do more with less. There are staff shortages. There’s a lack of expertise in certain areas, there’s particular imaging, and there is still a growing volume to look at as well. So, there’s really a lot of challenges that the provider has today,” said Shen.

Siemens believes it has a portfolio that offers clinicians the tools needed to address those challenges. For example, being able to monitor the efficiency of a radiology or imaging department, or the ability to utilize technologies to offer remote scanning capabilities. “Being able to operate complex pieces of equipment like aCTorMRIfrom a central location to a remote facility or outpatient facility without having staff with expertise in that remote location, these are some of the things that obviously took off for us during the pandemic, where people were really trying to help with staffing pressures,” said Shen.

Shen noted that radiology departments have been adopting these technologies and tools to address challenges facing providers and to increase the value they’re delivering back to the organization.

“So how do they increase the overall value of the diagnostic report that they are outputting, and stress the clinical meaning behind that work to other clinicians, to the patient, and to the organization as a whole? With this, we see an opportunity to really change that teaching value, and promote change through this smart imaging value chain — smart in the sense of being able to take advantage of all these new technologies and concepts that are out there,” Shen said.

Shen sees a sea change coming around this region in enterprise, which provides a good opportunity to enhance the value of radiology.

“The point to all that is we also see it as it goes beyond radiology imaging. Radiologists want this capability, but cardiologists want to have a more educated, more confident type of diagnosis coming from traditional clinical data. And then we’re also potentially looking in the area of qualitative ‘ology,’ which is, I think, where radiology was maybe several decades ago with the concept of digitalization. It’s more than just digitizing the slide now. Now it is actually leveraging tools like artificial intelligence, and analyzing that new digital image on the drive, maybe to help make more of a diagnostic decision. Maybe to be more confident to try to figure out the particular patient.

“So the future, in our view, is actually now, and we’ve got the tools,” Shen continued. “The future is actually the present in terms of these concepts. And I predict that more and more, there is going to be more remote working in rural areas with experts.”

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