In a sophisticated, bidirectional scanning setting, with imaging and other images and reports scattered across any number of PACS systems and electronic health records, scientific and technology leaders at Cleveland-based MetroHealth had one “guiding North Star”, says Dr. David Kaelber, the health system’s key health informatics officer and VP of individual engagement technologies. ” We want any photo, as well as the scanning document, to be available to everyone involved in the care of the patient at any time, from wherever– including the patient”, he said. That’s a high order because the number and type of scanning orders have grown significantly in recent years, and the IT systems that support and promote them have expanded and become more sophisticated and far-flung. You can get mri of all kinds of different parts of your body by all kinds of different people, especially for the past ten years. It’s not longer just the doctor doing scanning. We have all these distinct’ sciences,’ said Kaelber. But about ten years ago, MetroHealth began a new plan based on a vendor-neutral library and a general viewer to establish procedures and governance to make those images more readily available and accessible to those who require access to them across the care continuum, from the exam room to the patient’s own device to the imaging center. At HIMSS25 in Las Vegas in March, Kaelber, alongside his colleague Dr. Eman Jammali, a family physician who serves as a clinical informatics fellow at the MetroHealth System/Case Western Reserve University, will present an education session titled”, Imagine Imaging Harmony: The Journey to Overcome Imaging Silos. They’ll examine how and where patient care teams were hampered by the integrated health system’s inability to standardize imaging data in recent years. And they’ll explain how MetroHealth established a steering committee to chart a path toward a common governance framework for all imaging specialties, including harmonising procedures, setting priorities, and facilitating better collaboration between care teams and their patients. Millions of images from seven different departments are now accessible through Epic’s MyChart portal, making it possible for patients to access them through its imaging platform. We created this governance, and then decided we needed a vendor neutral archive and universal viewer on top of that, Kaelber says.” We’ve been on this march of, OK, let’s get everything into the VNA, which is then viewable with the universal viewer,” Kaelber says. At HIMSS25, Kaelber will describe the clinical and IT collaboration that built out the processes for that over several years. Jammali will explain what it has meant for care delivery deliquality, quality improvement ” We started with radiology, and then cardiology. But now we’ve done endoscopy, urology, ophthalmology, dentistry, OB/GYN, pathology. Then, it is integrated with our electronic health record. The end user doesn’t have to worry about that, the idea is that basically 99.9 % of all images are ordered through the EHR”.He adds:” And then our standard is basically at the top of any text of an imaging result, we just have a hyperlink to the image, and then that opens up the universal view, or whether you’re on a desktop, a laptop, your smartphone, a tablet, anything that can get you into the electronic health record then could open up that window so you could see the image “.The “icing on the cake”, said Kaelber, was that” we wanted patients to be able to do that, too. So about two years or so ago now, we integrated in with our personal health record: Literally, any image, not only can your provider team see it, but then you as a patient, if you have a portal – which about 80 % of our patients do – then you’re seeing the results, the text of the imaging report, as well as you can click on your image and then you can show it to yourself or anybody else that you want to”.Kaelber and Jammali’s session,” Imagine Imaging Harmony: The Journey to Overcome Imaging Silos”, is scheduled for Tuesday, March 4 from 10: 15 -11: 15 a. m. at HIMSS25 in Las Vegas. Healthcare IT News ‘ executive editor is Mike Miliard
Email the writer: mike. miliard@himssmedia.com
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