In healthcare, medical images play an important role in patient diagnosis, treatment, and care. Enterprise PACS Imaging Solutions are essential tools to ensure these data are available when and where they are needed.
The right solution will streamline your diagnostic workflow, provide secure access to images, and enable interoperability. It should also be flexible enough to meet your needs as they evolve.
Streamlined Diagnostic Workflow
Streamlining diagnostic workflows is essential to saving healthcare organizations money. Across the industry, $15 billion to $20 billion in wasteful costs can be avoided by improving productivity.
With the help of an expert healthcare consultant, hospitals and departments can identify areas where they could improve workflow efficiency. This includes reviewing test ordering processes and identifying any gaps in procedures that might cause errors.
Once these issues are identified, a healthcare technology company can provide tools to support and educate staff on how to implement the changes needed to streamline workflows, explains Philips’ Sokka. He cites a simulation program that helped Lowell General Hospital in Massachusetts improve its CT operations within three months.
Other solutions that can help automate some of the technologists’ manual tasks include AI technologies that suggest protocols based on collected data. This innovation in protocol selection can improve exam quality and save the technologist time and energy. It can also help ensure that all exams are performed safely and effectively.
Secure Access to Images
Secure access to images for physicians and healthcare organizations is a major concern. This is especially true for a PACS system that holds critical data, such as DICOM images, for an extended period of time.
This is why we offer Store XR, a cloud-based PACS platform that offers scalable storage and enterprise-level archiving while offering TLS encryption, data-at-rest encryption, web access to DICOM objects and more.
In the event of an attack, this PACS solution will protect sensitive medical information and ensure that only authorized personnel can view patient data. In addition, Store XR provides digital signatures and trusted timestamps to protect against manipulation.
This is the best approach for any healthcare organization looking to ensure that only legitimate users can access patient data. The IHE “Secure Retrieve” profile (SeR) allows PACS to query the HIS to determine whether a user request for a patient record is authentic. This way, a PACS administrator can determine if a user has a right to access patient data.
Interoperability
Interoperability refers to the ability of two or more systems, devices, applications or products to connect and communicate in a coordinated way, without requiring effort from the end user. This helps organizations achieve higher efficiencies and performance, resulting in a more holistic view of information.
In healthcare, enterprise imaging promotes the development of interoperability by enabling communication across different points on the care continuum. This enables physicians to access medical imaging records from any specialist and vice versa, with minimal time required for data processing.
A well-implemented enterprise imaging platform can help healthcare providers achieve compliance, and archival efficiency and reduce storage costs. In addition, it can help streamline workflows and improve the patient experience.
To achieve enterprise interoperability, a solution needs to be vendor neutral and offer scalable image exchange and interoperability toolsets. It also needs to support multiple data formats and deliver automation of workflow processes.
Scalability
Scalability is the ability of a system, business or software to adapt to changing demands and needs. It is a characteristic of stability and competitiveness because scalable networks, systems or software can handle an influx of demand, increased productivity, trends, changing needs and even new competitors.
Scalable systems can handle changes in workload without affecting performance. This includes the ability to add and remove resources quickly and efficiently.
A scalable system can also withstand a growing number of users and transactions at once, as well as the ability to handle different classes of hardware. This enables companies to expand their network without major disruptions in services or applications.
The scalability of an enterprise imaging solution is important to consider before choosing a system. Look for a scalable solution that has multi-thread capabilities, can manage many transactions simultaneously and offers flexible design options to match your data environment.
