Visualizing better care

Mary Stevens, editor, CMIO magazine

Having advanced images available in an electronic record will evolve from cutting-edge technology to requirement eventually. However, getting complex images into everyday workflows will require answers to questions such as, how will these data-intense images be stored? How will they be kept secure? And perhaps most important, are these images necessary for improving daily care?

Probably not for everyone in the entire organization. “The challenge is to find the right balance between having enough tools or too many tools available,” said Rasu B. Shrestha, MD, medical director of interoperability and imaging informatics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, in the November issue of CMIO magazine on this topic.

Efforts to develop what Shrestha called a “user-defined set of tools where a customized user-centric viewer is used at the front end” are in their early stages, but this is where the industry needs to go, he said. “That level of customization will quickly become the theme of how you access data across the board, not just the tools available, but even the types of data that get presented to you.”

A customizable view of advanced images is a start; another important step is building, freeing up, or farming out the resources necessary to store these images. Then there’s the exchange that enables these images to get to the clinician who needs them. Some of the work in this area will be included in HIMSS11’s upcoming Interoperability Showcase.

I recently asked Lisa Spellman, MBA, senior director of informatics and IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) staff liaison for HIMSS, if widespread integration of advanced images in electronic records is on the horizon.

Her answer? Yes: “One of the things we’ll show this year is demonstration of image sharing of any type that has basic DICOM standards, deployed in PACS. We are seeing more of this, and we are going to be demonstrating what this type of image sharing looks like,” she said.

On the practitioner side of the equation, it will take teamwork to handle advances in advanced visualization. Incorporating advanced digital imaging modalities and storage, team-based approaches to cardiac care and hiring health IT staff to master new technologies will likely be the wave of the future for improving the cath lab, as well as its outcomes, according to a Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) white paper published earlier this month. The same applies to any organization that uses ever-more sophisticated images in diagnosis and patient care.

What’s your view on advanced visualization? Let me know at mstevens@trimedmedia.com