Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Two major players in healthcare IT -- Siemens Healthcare and Dell -- this week announced plans to collaborate in vendor-neutral archiving and image sharing. The alliance will debut at next week's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) meeting in Las Vegas.
Under the terms of the deal, Dell will provide its cloud-based archiving software to Siemens to package and offer to customers as part of Siemens' new Image Sharing and Archiving (ISA) program, according to an article in our Healthcare IT Digital Community by associate editor Cynthia E. Keen. Both companies will market the service collaboratively.
The alliance is a testament to healthcare's rapidly growing interest in cloud-based archiving, in which digital data are stored offsite and accessed via Web-based connections, rather than stored on computers at individual facilities. At the same time, imaging sites are also looking for more efficient ways to share images with patients, referring physicians, and other radiologists.
Get more details about the alliance by clicking here, or visit the community at healthcareit.auntminnie.com. And be sure to check back in the community next week for daily reports from the HIMSS conference.
Assault on medical 'overtesting'
In other news, the American College of Physicians (ACP) is taking aim at what it claims is excessive medical testing -- and it's using a number of examples from medical imaging to illustrate the problem.
The ACP, which represents internal medicine physicians, believes that excessive testing is costing the U.S. healthcare system between $200 billion and $250 billion per year. Such testing ranges from CT scans for lung disease to MRI for back pain to some coronary angiography studies, the organization stated.
To curb the problem, ACP plans to develop a set of guidelines on when to perform diagnostic testing. But appropriateness criteria already exist in radiology, and the issue is whether referring physicians will actually use them, or whether their fears of being targeted by lawsuits will perpetuate the cycle of defensive medicine and healthcare spending that has driven up healthcare costs.
To read the story, click here or visit our Imaging Leaders Digital Community at leaders.auntminnie.com.
