by
Olga Deshchenko, DOTmed News Reporter | February 11, 2011
From the January/February 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
An upcoming battle
The adoption of electronic health records across the country is moving along but it’s also stirring a debate about the role of medical imaging in EHRs. “The role of imaging as a meaningful use aspect raises a number of important and interesting questions that I think we will be looking at tackling,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, the national health IT coordinator, speaking at the Health IT Standards Committee Meeting in early January.
One question already surfacing is what the role of PACS and radiology-specific systems shoud be in EHRs. Some providers, like Henry Ford’s Halabi, believe the two should be separate. “A lot of what’s happening in the general medical electronic record doesn’t really pertain to radiology. I think that radiologists really want their own catered electronic health record, where it’s pushing things that are pertinent to them, whether it’s clinical history or pathology or labs — that are being read just in time for interpretation,” he says.
Halabi believes radiologists at major institutions or large radiology departments want to develop their own EHRs that will ensure “you’re not the orphan of the general EHR but actually a vibrant component of the whole medical system.”
It’s yet unclear how radiology will fit into the EHR realm but some predict that PACS might be an antiquated term in the near future. “We’re really looking at radiology management systems, where you’re not only presenting imaging, you’re bringing in HL7 feeds from the rest of the health care system and presenting them to the radiologist,” says Halabi. “I really think those companies able to do that will come out ahead.”
Vendors expect the consolidation trend in the PACS market to continue, as the technology becomes commoditized and features more ubiquitously across systems. PACSHealth’s Battin believes that as the value differentiation between different players lessens, third-party add-ons and other external pieces will serve as the distinguishing aspects of specific systems.
The most desired features are sure to be the ones that not only help improve efficiency and extract relevant data but also enable providers to connect with their patients in new ways. “You have this huge millennial generation that’s coming up that wants everything at their fingertips. I think it’s going to be a challenge for classic medicine to provide it,” says Halabi.
“I think there’s a major shift in radiology of making ourselves more pertinent or relevant, to act as another caretaker of the patient, not just somebody behind the curtains who’s taking care of the physician,” he says.
