Unlocking Data Silos with Enterprise Imaging-based Solution

Picture archiving communication systems, or PACS, have been the foundation of medical imaging for healthcare organizations. Introduced in the 1980s, organizations have used PACS to store and call up images for reading for departments such as cardiology, radiology and more

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由于医疗保健提供者的目标是提供高质量、协调一致的护理并改善患者结果，他们必须找到方法，不仅要改变和适应高技术流程和技术进步，还要努力实现部门、提供者、组织和患者之间开放、无缝的数据流动。

Picture archiving communication systems, orPACS, have been the foundation of medical imaging for healthcare organizations. Introduced in the 1980s, organizations have usedPACSto store and call up images for reading for departments such as cardiology, radiology and more. However, PACS is a vertical approach with each department managing its system silos. Because PACS vendors continue to use proprietary extensions, achieving interoperability within and outside the enterprise can be complicated and costly.

Clinicians and providers are typically required to search through multiple systems to get acquainted with a patient’s medical history and profile. Crucial data that could help clinicians arrive at a more precise diagnosis could potentially be missed because the information was stored and buried across too many systems to be found and reconciled.

As healthcare imaging data continues to expand, there is a need for technologies that connect data silos and support the entireenterprise.

Enterprise Imaging Solution

从数据共享到互操作性，PACS面临着挑战。当每个部门都有其专门的解决方案时，这可能会导致数据孤岛，限制了在一个查看器中组合图像和作为一个整体分析临床和性能数据的能力。Organizations that are looking to replace or change their PACS have an opportunity to expand their capabilities with a new solution —enterprise imaging— rather than continuing to replace PACS with PACS.

According toLarry Sitka, vice president and CSIO, Enterprise Applications, forVital, when it comes to unlocking data silos through implementing innovative solutions, indecision is one of the key setbacks for every healthcare organization.

“You have the typical healthcare organizations that simply choose to do nothing. What ends up happening is they buy another application, and their costs tend to double. Other organizations replace one vendor application with another and try to stay neutral. Usually, this adds additional costs going forward,” he explained.

Instead, Sitka suggests that healthcare organizations need to start thinking differently. “Don’t think about service lines and silo-based businesses, think about trying to take your service lines, whatever ‘-ology’ that may be, and turn it horizontal. What I mean by that is remove the silo, take a piece of software, create it at the enterprise, turn it horizontally, and start to leverage it across every service line. So now, rather than repurchase infrastructure and pieces of software for every single department, organizations can reuse that software across those departments,” he said.

Jonathan Shoemaker,一位医疗保健IT专家补充道:“当您被隔离到部门竖井中时，您的互操作性将变得非常复杂，支持组织的能力将变得微乎其微。在您的支持组织中，只有特定的主题专家，他们知道在这些先进的时代需要支持的特定产品的级别。”

相比之下，与供应商无关的企业映像解决方案(从图像、报告等获取患者数据，并将其合并到一个位置)就没有这些限制。企业成像(例如Vital的Vitrea企业成像解决方案)帮助医疗保健系统利用已经收集的图像数据，使其能够解锁、分析和共享信息，同时降低IT费用、维护安全性，并提高医生和患者的满意度。

Enterprise Imaging: A Three-legged Stool

Sitka认为，企业成像是一个“三脚凳”，包括诊断成像、医疗保健IT和生物业务。

“We are all used to the traditional diagnostic imaging leg of the three-legged stool — the viewing components, the applications that are used. However, enterprise imaging introduces two other pieces of this three-legged stool: healthcare IT and the biology side of the business — the genetics, the genomics, the liquid biopsies. All three of these work in unison from an enterprise approach to assist in diagnostic. Most importantly, there's this new user, called AI [artificial intelligence], that is keen to what's becoming known inside of enterprise imaging,” Sitka said.

However, Sitka also explained that if an organization lacks interoperability and data normalization standardization, there is no way for the AI algorithms to be lifted and leveraged.

苏梅克表示同意:“数据的规范化几乎比解决方案本身更重要。当你使用多个观察者时，你会发现这一点。有了人工智能，这种规范化变得更加重要，这样在处理大量数据时就不会产生一些偏见。”

As AI advances in medical imaging, there is a need to process, manage and store large amounts of data. Enterprise imaging can handle the data loads required to take advantage of AI and its possibilities in supporting diagnoses and workflows.

Enterprise Imaging Solution Applications

According to Sitka, there is a breakdown of three viewing technologies that traditionally exist on the diagnostics side of the imaging services business that is composed inside of Vital’s enterprise imaging solution.

There is a clinical, or enterprise-class viewer, which is typically used by clinicians and referring physicians. Next is the primary PACS replacement viewing solution that is used for viewing the images as well as workflow. The advanced visualization or high-end viewer allows for these solutions to collapse into one common solution.

“We also see another section that I would classify as the image orchestration or the data between departments, organizations and orchestration layer,” Sitka said. “[This] is the ability to take data orchestrated in unison, and then be able to return results based on the collective of all those messages. This gives the ability to not just archive image data, but archive any data inside the solution going forward, and then be able to not only save it but share it. And when I say share it, I mean also share it with other applications like those such as AI.”

Enterprise imaging also has an analytics viewer that is traditionally used by department heads who typically want to see the same information but in a different context — standardized and available in the format required by the user who is making the request.

“We have these different domains, one is used by humans, and the next one is used by AI-based algorithms. This is where we are seeing what I would call a collision between human and clinical-driven workflows into these data and analytics-driven workflows,” Sitka added.

在其他应用程序中，图像共享是企业映像可以改善数据流的另一个例子。它基本上消除了生成cd或dvd与附属组织和非附属组织共享图像的需要。

Organization Readiness

Enterprise imaging can make data accessible across all organizational sizes, multi-facility and provider networks, at any time and in any standardized form. It connects disparate PACS and provides data and image management tools that will help reduce unnecessary costs, promote efficiency, streamline collaboration, and can increase physician and patient satisfaction. However, there is still a lot of work to be done to ready organizations to implement enterprise imaging solutions.

“Some organizations have adopted VNA-based technology, some are still stuck in what I would call the PACS world, trying to becomeVNAs,” Sitka said. “This traditionally makes for too many silos, too many isolated applications, and it is very expensive to integrate.”

By implementing leading-edge technologies, such asVital’s enterprise imaging solution，医疗保健组织在整合部门、提供商和组织之间的数据竖井方面有很大的潜力。这样的实现可能有助于减少不必要的成本和最大化互操作性，反过来，可以帮助组织实现并超越他们的目标，以获得更好的患者护理和满意度。

“It is time to make the shift to the enterprise-based environments that we are seeing,” Sitka said.

If you’re not sure where to start on connecting your data silos, we’ve compiled a checklist of considerations when looking for a solution. Whether you are here to evaluate your current PACS or wanting to better understand the different technical capabilities, this guide will help you get started to think differently today.

Read the PACS eplacement Checklist athttps://bit.ly/3w6bKom.

For more information:www.vitalimages.com