For Hospitals, Radiology Optimization First Requires the Right IT Foundation

Each year, radiologists at the various hospitals and clinics that make up Michigan Medicine conduct roughly 700,000 imaging and interventional procedures, producing a bevy of files that must be stored and shared throughout the organization.

But last year, physicians and researchers expressed dissatisfaction with the organization’s setup, including its existing enterprise viewer, the lack of a true vendor-neutral archive to support enterprise image storage needs, and performance and reliability challenges with its existing picture archiving and communication system. What’s more, they sought to consolidate multiple viewing systems into a single platform.

The impetus, says Dr. Ella Kazerooni, interim chair of radiology for the Ann Arbor-based organization, was a desire to reduce silos while improving workflow.

“We’re emerging out of an era where storage was very partitioned and, depending on how some systems were set up and the way the PACS searched for storage, old-fashioned and archaic,” she says. “Our goal was to bring together imaging from all the different departments across the health system — ultrasound, cardiology, ophthalmology, digital pathology — so provider teams have easier access to what they need, when they need it."

https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2019/05/hospitals-radiology-optimization-first-requires-right-it-foundation