Healthcare reform could be good for advanced imaging

Mary Stevens, editor, CMIO

Add this item to the healthcare reform discussion: It could be good for imaging. Expansion of health insurance coverage under programs such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could reverse falling procedure volume and spending trends. Certainly PPACA faces battles, but if it proceeds as planned (which could be a big “if”), imaging device sales could see a five-year growth rate of as much as 5 percent, according to a recent report published by the Millennium Research Group (MRG).

In response to the general economic downturn and slashed reimbursements, sales in the diagnostic imaging market took a dip in 2009, and procedure volume is expected to stay sluggish until 2013, reported MRG. However, CT and MRI sales will see new, albeit probably uneven, growth until 2013, when hospitals are likely to start spending in preparation for healthcare reform’s 2014 expansion of coverage, the report concluded.

As the debate over PPACA rages on, innovation continues to advance visualization technologies. And if wider coverage brings additional patients into the healthcare system, mobile imaging capabilities will play a significant role in accommodating better care in a wider variety of settings—and clinicians can take their images with them.

Last week, the FDA cleared Mobile MIM, a radiology application that allows physicians to view medical images on the iPhone and iPad. It’s the first app cleared by the FDA for viewing images and making diagnoses based on CT, MRI and PET.

Mobilizing PACS, New Mexico Software has brought its free teleradiology app to Google Android smartphones and Samsung Galaxy Tablets. The downloadable PACS app can check number of cases or orders and can preview and zoom CT, echo/ECG, MRI, ultrasound or x-ray images as well as PDF diagnostic reports. FDA regulations prohibit the application’s images to be used for diagnostics, but radiologists can use them for case review and access to patient reports.

Additional recent newsmakers are tackling less glamorous aspects of advanced visualization, but they highlight the industry’s efforts to connect clinicians and handle the burgeoning load that advanced images place on systems. Getting that information from one provider to another, virtualization specialist VMware has enlisted eMix’s architecture to share PACS images and reports among disparate institutions and physicians via the internet. Its cloud-based service can facilitate associating patient images to EMRs and patients’ personal health records.

The arguments surrounding PPACA aren’t moot, by any means, but innovations in image accuracy, availability and delivery will continue to shape the future of imaging, whether or not healthcare reform stays on the books.

Do you think PPACA can drive more business toward advanced visualization, or would image innovation be better off without it? Let me know at mstevens@cmio.net.

Mary Stevens,
Editor of CMIO