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Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM, formerly
SCAR) met last week in Providence, Rhode Island. Some
of the hot topics included the following:
Information Sharing Among Enterprises
A notable focus at SIIM was the need for enterprises
to share information outside their own walls. Many business
needs are driving this requirement, including the RHIO
(regional healthcare information organization) initiative
and more physician/hospital joint ventures in outpatient
imaging. Several solutions, such as storage gateways
and data repositories that facilitate cross-enterprise
document and image sharing, were discussed. As the technology
to develop such gateways improves, a number of initiatives
are being launched to enable the sharing of information
across different provider networks.
PACS Replacement
The PACS market appears to be shifting from first-time
implementations to replacements. Several vendors have
indicated that the majority of their sales are coming
from the replacement of another vendor’s PACS.
One of the most difficult issues with PACS replacement
lies with data migration. The time and expense incurred
with PACS data migration and the solutions to this problem
continue to be hot topic.
One idea that is gaining support is the development
of enterprise archives that adhere rigorously to DICOM
standards. PACS sites forced to migrate data are being
much more careful about avoiding the need to ever do
this again. In addition, these archives would store
not only radiology data but also cardiology, pathology,
dermatology and endoscopy data. Separating the enterprise
archive from the rest of the PACS application provides
a central repository for all of a healthcare facility’s
data, eliminating the independent departmental data
silos that exist in many institutions.
3 D & Advanced Visualization
3D and advanced visualization were also engaging topics
at SIIM this year. A number of health care facilities
have overcome the challenge of managing workflow in
3D. Instead of attempting to fit 3D into the radiologists'
existing workflow, they are using technologists to do
it in a centralized workflow model, managed as a separate
business unit. This process not only facilitates 3D
post-processing in a production mode using less expensive
resources, but it also enables billing to be done reliably
and efficiently.
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