Dear PACS Insider,
Radiology-related issues have not always been big news makers at the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) meeting, but that wasn't the case this year.
In a special announcement prior to the formal release of the proposed rule for stage 2 of the U.S. government's meaningful use program, representatives from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave HIMSS attendees a sneak preview of the new draft rules. Imaging will specifically be included for the first time, added as one of five menu objectives.
You can get the details by clicking here and here.
Many vendors on the floor of HIMSS 2012 also reported a fair amount of interest in their image management portfolio. In addition, imaging-related educational sessions were held every day during the meeting.
In a Friday talk, representatives from Memorial Hermann Healthcare System in Houston shared how the use of cloud computing for radiology image exchange is driving improved quality of care, decreasing costs, and facilitating improved relationships with referrers. Our coverage of the Memorial Hermann experience is the subject of this month's Insider Exclusive, which you can access before the rest of our AuntMinnie.com members.
Other stories from HIMSS include coverage of the Cleveland Clinic's enterprise-oriented approach toward all forms of medical images. You can find that article here.
In other current news, teleradiology users will be interested to learn about planned legislation in Congress that aims to make it easier to use medical licenses across state lines. The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) also recently hosted a webinar on CT dose reporting; you can find our coverage here.
An open-source tool was also found to enable vendor-neutral capture of CT dose information from image repositories. International editor Eric Barnes has our coverage, which you can access here. Continuing our ongoing coverage on the utility of mobile devices in radiology, we've also got a story on how Apple's iPad was up for the task of assessing tuberculosis.
Do you have a topic you'd like to see covered, or are you interested in submitting an article? Please feel free to drop me a line.
