Every day, it seems, brings a sea change in healthcare IT. It’s much easier keeping track of, say, DNA coding. So what do healthcare professionals think of clinical information technology? The answers may surprise you.

To find out, Harris Interactive, a market research and consulting firm, conducted a national survey last January. The bottom line: 85 percent of respondents believe clinical IT will change the practice of medicine within the next five years.

Frost and Sullivan, the San Jose, Calif., business research firm, agrees, even though the RIS market recently hit a plateau that seemed permanent. That, of course, was before RIS products started to be linked to picture archiving and communications systems (PACS). In 2001, the U.S. RIS market totaled $150.6 million, a figure Frost expects to reach $163.6 million in 2004.

Frost and Sullivan senior industry analyst Amith Viswanathan says, “We expect PACS to become a salvaging force for high-end RIS sales” as products such as film tracking, scheduling, and admissions/discharge are increasingly integrated with image management systems.

It’s a prediction that’s already a reality. RIS’ newfound ability to store and display images alongside informational data has pushed it out of the administrative category and into the diagnostic realm. As it evolves, four trends are starting to emerge: the evolution of RIS and PAC systems into one megasystem sharing a common database; a new set of communications standards; new ways to incorporate paperwork into electronic medical records; and improved transmission of electronic medical data.

The reaction, if not unanimous, is certainly unambiguous.

“There’s no such thing as a RIS system anymore,” says David Channin, M.D., assistant professor of radiology and chief of imaging informatics at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University and medical director of PACS for Northwestern Memorial Hospital (both of Chicago), which handles 270,000 radiology procedures per year.

“Most places either have PACS,” says Channin, “or are going to have PACS, and you either need a RIS that’s really good at handling images, or you need a PACS that’s smart enough to do the few other things a RIS typically did in the past. But you don’t need two big information systems in a department anymore.”

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