McKesson touts installs at AHIMA

McKesson Corp. was one of the more than 240 exhibitors at the 2005 National Convention & Exhibition of the American Health Information Management Association, held in San Diego last week.

The company announced that it licensed its Horizon Patient Folder to its 500th facility earlier this month. As the most widely deployed healthcare document imaging solution in North America, McKesson's Horizon system has about 75 million digitized patient records consisting of more than four billion images stored. More than 15,000 clinicians a day access diagnostic images via McKesson. More than two million physicians log on per month to McKesson's Web-based portal.
   
The system is based on three repositories, says Bing Teng, vice president and general manager of McKesson's enterprise imaging group. They are document imaging, clinical, and medical imaging. "Horizon Patient Folder really offers bread-and-butter functions. It enhances without big changes," says Teng.
   
Earlier this summer, McKesson acquired Medcon Ltd., a global leader in cardiac image and information management solutions. Medcon is now providing McKesson Provider Technologies with the entire cardiovascular information solutions. Teng views this move as the acquisition of a sister business-cardiology PACS-to beef up its enterprise diagnostic imaging offerings.
   
Despite the challenge many organizations have to get their physicians on board with electronic health records, radiologists and other clinicians in the imaging arena have been pushing for advanced technology, says Teng. "Advanced scanning applications have created a need for a better structure but physicians have been the key drivers. Within radiology, physicians are ready."
   
Teng says the visibility of David Brailer, MD, PhD, national coordinator for health information technology, has created more momentum and penetration of electronic record systems. "He brings everything down to the consumer level," says Teng. "You can identify with his message as a patient and healthcare consumer." Brailer's talk provided the convention attendees with insights for the year to come and verified that progress has been made.
   
By next year's convention, Teng expects increased adoption, the dissemination of impact study results, and early interoperability trials and demonstrations on the showroom floor.