IT users need to demand more from vendors

May 14, 2008

SEATTLE - Healthcare providers and information technology (IT) users must do a better job of demanding that vendors incorporate into their products profiles and functions created from the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative.

That message came from Dr. Ronald Arenson, chairman of the department of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, who today gave the opening keynote address at the annual meeting of the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) in Seattle. Arenson was one of the founders of the Radiology Information System Consortium (RISC), which evolved into the former Society for Computer Applications in Radiology (SCAR), SIIM's predecessor.

In his talk, Arenson spoke of how the early successes of computer technology, dating back more than 50 years, progressed and converged with medical information systems and software of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to create today's best-of-breed integrated healthcare IT systems. Despite the advances over the years, IT has fallen short of expectations on several levels, including the secure accessibility of patient information for the appropriate healthcare providers.

IHE profiles

Since its inception several years ago, IHE has evolved with the creation of different IT profiles for functions such as workflow, postprocessing, infrastructure, and image presentation and report. The flow of information between RIS and PACS, for example, has become more complex with the addition of dictation systems and other ancillary imaging-related technologies. "Managing the interaction of these reports between these various IT systems is what that (IHE) workflow profile does," Arenson said.

However, he added, there is still an issue with the integration of IT systems and the security of that information, whereby people, such as healthcare providers and third-party payors who need access to patient information, can retrieve it safely. "I think it is a little scary that we have HIPAA involved in all these things to protect the patients, yet the world has access to patient information," Arenson said. "The issue is how do we manage getting that information to the right individuals in a form that is useful. I think we need a lot of work in this area. It also points out that security is very important to us and I would argue that we don't do as good a job as we could."

In order to create today's best-of-breed IT products, Arenson said that interoperability between IT systems and context-specific interfaces is a must. "You have to be able to pass on all the information on who the patient is … and do so in a back-office approach through a server that is transparent to the user," he noted.

Reason for optimism

Most important, vendors must include IHE profiles in their products, if those technologies are indeed IHE-compliant. "Let's get them to show it to us in their products, so we can continue to move ahead with these profiles and complete this puzzle we have of very complicated information in the healthcare industry," Arenson said.

As healthcare advances, various IT systems from radiology, the lab, and other sources need to come together, he added. With IHE creating that foundation through standards, such as HL7 and DICOM, vendors and users can test the developing technologies, validate them, and eventually implement them in the clinical setting.

"We know this is a challenge to put all these systems together," Arenson acknowledged, "but I think we do have reason to be optimistic about the future, because I think we will make headway in the next few years."

By Wayne Forrest
AuntMinnie.com staff writer
May 15, 2008

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