Health Imaging & IT – Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise - (Page 8)

case study: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center | New York, N.Y. not necessarily designed to work well together. Unfortunately, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), HL7 and DICOM do not provide a complete solution. The issue is magnified at Memorial Sloan-Kettering because it is a large installation across multiple locations. While some clinicians may promote best-of-breed solutions, the IT burden of the best-of-breed approach may outweigh the benefits, says Kijewski. “It’s very difficult to manage four to six vendors that all support radiology applications.” For example, it can take months or longer to resolve a seemingly simple multivendor IT communication glitch. “When there’s one vendor, the burden of developing a solution falls on one party,” explains Kijewski. The single-vendor approach reduces or eliminates problems caused by different systems trying to communicate with each other, which, in turn, allows the system to focus on higher level needs like business continuity and disaster recovery. What’s more, the single-vendor model is more cost-effective. “Working with multiple vendors, support teams and different technologies require staff time and effort, which translates into cost. At the end of the day, best of breed is a much more expensive system,” opines Kijewski. The single-vendor approach also facilitates business growth. Kijewski explains, “We are very rapidly growing with multiple imaging centers under construction. We will require an IT performance uplift as we bring new centers online. This is easier to do with a single system than it is with several disparate systems and vendors.” rIs/PaCs: the big picture Integrated RIS/PACS is the wave of the future, and, at the same time, it is a work in progress. “Any customer considering RIS/PACS needs to be cognizant that the product will undergo an evolutionary process. Benefits will take time to develop,” Kijewski says. Kijewski and Lynch recommend that colleagues evaluating new systems ask and answer the following questions: » Is the system truly consolidated, or does it merely glue together various components? » What benefits are available? When will benefits be available? » Is the company in the market for the long haul? Can the system grow with the hospital or enterprise? Integrated RIS/PACS is a long-term project—an investment— rather than an acquisition. It requires a solid vendor committed to the undertaking. The gains, however, are significant, particularly for the IT department as it reduces the IT burden, facilitates streamlined business continuity and cuts overall costs. n Taking voice Recognition to the Next level Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City first deployed its current voice recognition solution in 2003, beginning with nuclear medicine and interventional radiology and bringing the system to other areas over a six-month period. “The initial implementation was challenging,” admits Peter Kijewski, PhD, attending physicist and PACS project director, “because the voice recognition system and PACS were not integrated at first.” Today, however, the center is a voice recognition success story—with 95 percent of its dictating radiologists self-correcting, which has improved report turnaround time and cut costs. Despite completing in excess of 300,000 exams annually, the radiology department employs only two part-time transcriptionists. Kijewski attributes the hospital’s success to a variety of factors: improvements in the voice recognition system, better integration between PACS and voice recognition, use of a PACS workstation reading model and radiologists’ willingness to adapt to the new system. The next step, says Kijewski, is to deploy GE Healthcare Centricity RIS/PACS with embedded voice recognition. “It will bring smoother workflow for radiologists.” For example, under the current model, the systems appear unified to radiologists. In reality, however, multiple steps take place in the background to move data from the voice recognition solution to RIS and then to PACS. Embedded voice recognition eliminates the extra steps and the delays that occur as data are transferred between systems. In addition, the new system will simplify IT support by reducing the number of distinct systems to be maintained. Integrated RIS/PACS/voice is a winning combination that delivers benefits to radiologist end-users and IT staff—as well as physicians, referring physicians and patients who get vital information more quickly and efficiently. It streamlines processes for all users, driving increased efficiencies and reduced costs. Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise November 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Health Imaging & IT – Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise

Health Imaging & IT – Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise Table of Contents Integrated RIS/PACS: Making Work Flow Singular Benefits: Integrated RIS/PACS Delivers Imaging Center Battle Strategies: Combating DRA Spurring Reading Efficiency in a Large Imaging Center Group Creating the Global Imaging Record RIS/PACS for the Community Hospital What’s the Best? Single Vendor vs. Best of Breed

Health Imaging & IT – Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise

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