Information Management: Connections, Connections
In information management, connectivity, access to images, greater productivity and enhanced workflow are everything.

As medical imaging technologies collect more and more data and produce images with increasing clarity, information technology has become a more critical tool in transmitting patient images and records to their appropriate destinations for more efficient care.

Hemant Goel, enterprise vice president for radiology and clinical imaging at Cerner Corp. (Kansas City, Mo.), sees enterprisewide imaging integration as the next step in IT.

“In the next couple of years, there will be this whole movement of integrating electronic medical records and images together for radiology and cardiology, as well as outside specialists,” Goel says.

Len Grenier, senior vice president and CTO at A.L.I. Technologies Inc.’s (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), concurs.

“Cost is a driver. There are systems with 70 to 80 percent data overlap, so there are strong pressures to see RIS and PACS merge into a single radiology management system,” Grenier adds. “The other driver is clinical efficiency. You can be filmless and reading soft copy in radiology, but that doesn’t do you much good if you are still making film for referring clinicians.”

Please refer to the January 2002 issue for the complete story. For information on article reprints, contact Martin St. Denis