Get educated

With your priorities in mind, educate yourself about the specific technologies that will best meet your needs. Talk with other VNA users about the pros and cons of their approach to the VNA and their specific system choices. And, of course, it's never too early in the process to launch your search for suitable vendors.


Understand your retention policies

A VNA can automate information lifecycle management. Yet many sites implement a VNA without a clear idea of policies for information retention across the hospital. Survey the different departments involved in the project to begin plan development. Currently, some departments may never delete a single file, making archiving costs add up quickly and, perhaps surprising, putting them at increased legal risk. Policies may require review. Information about retention can help predict initial storage hardware requirements.

Anticipate integration issues

Investigate the systems that may be integrated with your VNA. PACS and EMR are obvious choices -- but typically there will be others. Speak to your vendors and industry consultants about any potential integration issues so you will have a head start when ready to implement the project.

Understand your referrers' expectations

How will referrers want to interact with the VNA? For example, will they want to view diagnostic-quality images with advanced tools and formatting options, or will lightweight images suffice? The varied preferences of referring physicians will often involve added costs and tradeoffs. Knowing this in advance will help with planning and avoid user disappointment.

Today's healthcare reform contains a multitude of initiatives involving enhanced cross-enterprise communication and data interoperability. Given that, odds are there may be a VNA in your future.

Greg Strowig is Chief Operating Officer of TeraMedica Inc., a vendor neutral architecture company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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