The health system underwent an ACR accreditation after standardized protocols, and it went well, Scherzinger said, though she admitted that compliance can be difficult to monitor.

Following the talks, experts in the field discussed how they approached organization and collaboration at their facilities during roundtable discussions on supporting service-line integration.


Sylvia Devlin, a certified imaging informatics professional from MedStar Health who led one of the discussions, spoke about how her company moved beyond a "silo PACS environment" by taking images from the PACS system and placing them into what she called an enterprise radiology solution. Eventually, the goal is to move beyond radiology imaging and also included different areas of study, such as cardiology and fetal assessments.

Devlin stressed that patients favor enterprise imaging, as they want the information as quickly as the doctor, and prefer “being stewards of the data."

Enterprise imaging is also important as more patients flock to urgent care centers. “I think that's what resonates with patients," said Dr. Vikash Gupta, a resident at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who spoke about augmented and virtual reality in medical imaging at the meeting.

Those in Devlin's group also discussed how better data sharing between departments and facilities can address the challenge of tracking down various medical records before patients can be discharged, as well as how radiologists can better be trained in technology so they can more easily link current and past studies.

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