Dear Healthcare IT Insider,
The influence of healthcare IT in radiology took center stage at this month's 2007 Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) meeting in Providence, RI.
Hands-on IT personnel and other experts shared their knowledge with colleagues from hospitals, imaging centers, and clinics across the globe. Among the issues discussed and debated at SIIM 2007 is the never-ending need for more archive storage capacity.
With image file sizes expanding -- thanks to multidetector CT, MRI, CR, and digital mammography -- the ability to accurately forecast archive storage needs is critical, both in terms of patient care and finances. The last thing a healthcare facility wants is to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, only to discover a year or two later that it needs to allocate even more money to expand storage capacity once again.
The Medical University of South Carolina went back 11 years to analyze storage trends in all of its imaging modalities. Read what the facility discovered, how it calculates future storage capacity, and advice on applying those methods to any facility by clicking here.
Also, read how a two-tier imaging IT support staffing model that blends the experience of personnel can result in a high level of flexibility and improved service. Click here for staff writer Erik Ridley's report from SIIM 2007.
When radiology gets the call to come to the OR "stat," it can wreak havoc on everyone's schedule. Read how the University of Pennsylvania Health System handles workflow issues and ways to avoid bottlenecks in efficiency when intraoperative ultrasound is called to the OR in this report.
In other featured stories, detailed pictures of the face from 3D surface-reconstructed images were found to be poor substitutes for digital photographs. The report also discusses how the facial reconstructions could become a patient privacy issue under the provisions of HIPAA.
Finally, imaging informatics has great potential to influence clinical research in a positive way. Dr. Eliot Siegel from the University of Maryland School of Medicine discusses how imaging can lead to smaller clinical trials with fewer patients, faster regulatory approval, and shorter time to market. Click here to learn more about his presentation at SIIM 2007.
There is no doubt that healthcare IT's role in delivering quality patient care grows with each technological advance. Watch it unfold in the Healthcare IT Digital Community in the coming months.
