NOVEMBER - 20188IMAGE-ENABLED EMRS: THE NEXT WAVE OF DRIVING EFFICIENCIES IN THE HEALTH SYSTEMIn My OpinionEvery day new headlines announce the continued seismic shifts that the healthcare industry is going through. From the digital revolution happening globally to paradigm shifts in regions like the U.S. as we go from a fee-for-service model to one that is based in value--the only constant in healthcare is change.More than 15 years ago, the industry was focused on digitization, and simply getting paper records into digital format. And while there are many obvious benefits around this effort, one of the aftermaths was that, as an industry, we created digital silos of information. We built a car, but we forgot to make sure that different parts of the car were able to communicate with each other. And we forgot to put in the dashboard to know how fast we're going, or how many miles we've traveled.Today, health organizations are building that dashboard, with the help of technology companies. These organizations are connecting data and work streams within multiple locations so they can find actionable insights that help improve the health of patients and their businesses.But of course, there are hurdles to overcome when creating architecture that connects these different types, sources and silos of data. The information often comes from multiple locations and systems--whether within the organization or from other health systems--which can often lead to complications.To add an additional hurdle, we've seen an increase in consolidation among healthcare organizations due to mergers and acquisitions over the past couple years, and with that comes the merging of even more IT systems, data sources and complexity.Within all this transformation, many CIOs of health systems and hospitals understand that they must create an architecture that helps facilitates efficiencies, eliminates waste, taps into the massive amounts of new data and keeps patient safety at the center of it all.One of the first actions that many CIOs took to address this broader opportunity was rolling out electronic medical records. With that initiative in the rear view mirror of most organizations, health executives are now looking at the next big opportunity: driving optimization by bringing together and streamlining storage and systems.An important but maybe overlooked area where health organizations can help eliminate waste and better coordinate care is through a consolidated view of imaging and imaging IT systems across their enterprise. However, to do this, an organization needs to establish the proper architecture.Imagine all the images that exist within one health system. The organization captures each patient's x-rays, CT scans and lab reports. Additionally, there are thousands of other images captured and shared in areas like wound care, plastic surgery or dermatology.The challenge is how to take this siloed information from different departments and integrate the data so clinicians have the right information at the right time.Bill Stoval, VP & GM of Enterprise Imaging, GE Healthcare ITByBill Stoval
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