Imagine a world where medical images can electronically follow the patient, regardless of where they were taken. This would provide clinicians the ability to access any medical image type from an archived single repository that maintains the privacy and security of the data.
The diagnostic applications team within the IS Clinical & Revenue Cycle Applications organization has selected medical image sharing vendor Ambra to help modernize the way we share critical patient images, such as x-rays and MRIs.
Without Ambra, this is how patient scenarios typically unfold . . . .
- A patient is life-flighted to one of our hospitals with a CD of his MRI taped to his chest.
- An ED physician is unable to find an image he suspects was taken previously—someone suggests he look in the Epic media tab. In frustration, he orders another x-ray, exposing the patient to additional radiation and generating another bill that insurance will not pay.
- An on-call physician is asked for a second opinion but the image will not display on his phone, so the consult has to wait until he can find a Windows PC and log in.
- A department saves a specialty study onto CD because there is no place to archive it.
- A housebound 78-year-old wants a copy of his images to show his son in another city. He has to have someone drive him to the hospital, pick up the CD, then copy it to a PC so he can email it.
Beyond reducing the burning of images to CDs, there are three major enterprise imaging initiative projects slated for the rest of 2019 and into 2020:
- Universal Image Viewer that can deliver any medical image alone or via Epic.
- Application Independent Clinical Archive (VNA) that acts as a single repository to store and manage all medical images
- Image Exchange Solution that allows us to simply and securely send and receive studies to providers and facilities outside our walls.
Resources
See an outline of our imaging initiatives and more about Ambra.
Please contact Rudy Neyenhuis, director, IS diagnostic applications, for additional information.