A familiar refrainstandards needed
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| Mary Stevens, editor, CMIO |
Quantitative imaging—processing image metadata, radiologist observations, machine observations and image markups—might be the next big thing in radiology, but it’s not widely used now because it’s complicated. Help might be on the way, and the assistance will be familiar to most CMIOs: informatics.
The current workflow relies on paper data forms, verbal communication and text reports to share data, and none of these elements are currently machine-accessible, said Daniel L. Rubin, MD, of Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif.
“We lack a standard for representing and communicating image metadata. This results in the inability to exchange and access image metadata as easily as DICOM images,” said Rubin. “The good news is the technology is here, but our informatics infrastructure doesn’t enable it.” His vision for the future includes automated workflow for radiologists and a robust platform for data mining.
Will the data mining platform be a cloud? Image sharing via the cloud is not a new idea; the technique is already enabling image sharing across institutions, communities and beyond. But a group of presenters at SIIM argued that clouds may ultimately prove inferior to Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative. As the number of cloud vendors grows, the problem of too many cumbersome image viewers may simply resurface in a new arena, they said.
The Radiologic Society of North America (RSNA) and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) are trying another way. Later this month, the NIBIB/RSNA Image Sharing Project will start enrolling patients in a two-year IHE image sharing trial.
Getting standards adopted, building integration processes and applying informatics to images will help providers get the most out of their advanced visualization systems, and it will be interesting to see these efforts' progress at next year’s SIIM convention.
Also on the watch list is meaningful use: Radiologists must pay attention to the requirements because they apply to imaging professionals, said Keith J. Dreyer, DO, PhD, oft Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, during his presentation at SIIM. Many meaningful use myths have been perpetuated over the last 18 months, stated Dreyer, and all are false. The biggest myth to avoid is the belief that meaningful use, if ignored long enough, will go away.
Will informatics power advanced visualization to new analytical capabilities? Let me know at mstevens@trimedmedia.com. And if your small hospital (150 beds or fewer) has implemented an advanced visualization project that's generated measurable workflow or quality improvements, I'd like to hear about it.
Mary Stevens
Editor of CMIO