Cardiovascular Business - January/February 2008 - (Page 22)

IMaGe InTeGRaTIon › By LEsLiE K. ANDErsoN Cardiac Images in the EMR “We made a decision we wanted to have complete access to all of the image information. We did not want to put them in the electronic health record per se. We created a report and associated with that report a link that connects you to the images,” says James E. Tcheng, MD, professor of medicine and medical knowledge architect for Duke Health System. Their clinical data repository contains data for nearly 3 million patients. Within the repository are 60 to 70 million individual records, from something as simple as a finger stick blood glucose lab result to a complete patient history. The hospital-wide EHR was custom-designed and implemented by Duke. On the cardiology end, they chose Philips Xcelera cardiovascular information system (CVIS) to collect patient reports and cardiac images. Radiology images are stored on a GE Healthcare Centricity PACS. “We wanted to be able to access the textbase report [dictated reports or structured reports] relating to all the tests. We also wanted to be able to view the video. So we have created a system where we launch a separate viewer to view the images at any time we would want to do that. We do that inside the EHR so we don’t have to go searching for the patients to access their record,” says Tcheng. “It’s simply a click away.” To launch the video, they use a web-based browser, a program they wrote internally. “By launching the separate application, physicians are able to see video, 15 to 30 frames per second video, which native Internet Explorer isn’t well designed to do,” says Tcheng. The benefits of having the cardiac images Commercially available or homegrown software allows cardiologists to access images and videos within an available in the EMR most greatly impact EMr environment. I Just a click away in Durham, N.C., and St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany, N.Y., they both wanted it the easiest way possible and went with the click. n 2007, the number of electronic medical record system installs jumped 22 percent over the previous year. Approximately one-third of U.S. physicians now have an EMR system, while cardiology EMR adoption is estimated to be 8 to 9 percent, ranking high among specialties, according to the Medical Records Institute. That number is sure to blossom along with the growth in cardiac care needs and the national push for EMR adoption. With that, integrating cardiac information and images into the record for easy physician access is critical to quality healthcare. Finding a solution to integrating cardiac images into the EMR can take a couple courses: Provide a representative image directly in the report or provide everything with a click. At Duke Health System Having it all 22 Cardiovascular Business January/february 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cardiovascular Business - January/February 2008

Cardiovascular Business - January/February 2008 Contents The Ticker: Quality Pays in Several Ways Cover Story: The Proof: Why Evidence-based Medicine Improves Cardiac Care Clinical Study Digest: Co-payments and Cath Labs Cardiac PET/CT Fills in Gaps Left by SPECT Tapping into IT to Improve the Office-Based Practice SPECT–Proving Its Value Cardiac Images in the EMR: Just a Click Away The Top 20 Ways to Market Your Cardiac CTA Practice The Big Picture: Medical Displays for Cardiac Images Statins Work But Pharmacoeconomic Caveats Abound Driving Data Protection: Opting for Storage On- or Offsite News & Views Calendar Reader’s Resource

Cardiovascular Business - January/February 2008

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