The U.S. healthcare system is designed to facilitate freedom of choice by letting patients seek care from multiple providers. While the benefits are far-reaching, electronic data sharing between providers and unified views of patient health records still leaves much to be desired. A patient's medical history, including diagnostic imaging data, is often scattered across multiple unconnected organizations. What's more, these data, and therefore the problem, continue to grow.
By 2012, diagnostic imaging volumes in the U.S. are expected to exceed one billion exams per year. Of exams conducted today, estimates put the percentage exported to physical media (CD/DVD) for the purpose of cross-provider sharing at 10% to 20%. A visit to any modern healthcare facility will reveal that these data volumes have already surpassed the effective limits of physical media. And, as volumes continue to increase and government regulations are imposed, the need for advanced solutions that simplify and improve information sharing between providers, radiologists, clinicians, and patients has become essential.
SHARING WITH PHYSICAL MEDIA
Today, the digital distribution of medical images between providers and their radiologists has surpassed 90%. Despite this high level of digital adoption, all other image access involving patients and their clinicians and cross-providers has been limited to physical media.
When patients visit a physician, they typically present their diagnostic images on CD/DVD. A number of potential issues may arise with this form of physical data sharing. The CD/DVD:
• may contain a wide variety of image viewers with varying capabilities;
• may not contain the radiology report;
• may contain image data from different or multiple patients;
• image data may not be DICOM formatted; or
• image data may not load.
Even if these issues are overcome, there is no process for data archiving, which may become necessary for liability reasons and future clinical review.
Right now, image-centric subspecialties, such as oncology, cardiology, orthopedics, trauma, and surgery, are most affected. But as imaging becomes a common diagnostic tool, these problems will continue to expand and affect generalists and a wider range of specialists alike.
Let's use the neurosciences to illustrate some of these challenges. Interviews conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital reveal that during a patient consult, much of a neurosurgeon's time is spent loading, viewing, and interpreting multiple CD/DVDs with various image viewers. Up to 50% of that time can be wasted simply trying to display the patient's image data; the amount of time these subspecialists have for the patient consult is considerably reduced.
