RSNA 2013 - RC725 - quantitative imaging: informatics

Radiology currently is primarily concerned with pattern recognition with some linear measurments. Therefore, the demand for quantitative tools is little in radiology. Residents should be trained in using 3d software and planning during their regular rotations. To determine the correct measurements validation datasets are needed. What is required:

1. Better tools to create measurements are required with integration into the PACS to integrate into the regular workflow.

2. Better tools for representing the results (DICOM SR and AIM are available but adoption by vendors is slow).

3. Education.

4. Validation datasets. How to use existing tools and how not to mis-use them.

The main immediate informatics challenge is that the workflow for 3D postprocessing is poor.

QIBA is trying to streamline the process of obtaining quantitative imaging biomarkers. Using standards is a prerequisite in this effort.

RSNA 2013 - VSIN21 - radiology informatics series: mobile computing devices

Mobile is the single largest disruptive technology for the next decade. While desktop PCs are reducing in number the number of tablets is rising steadily. The number of smartphones is exploding right now showing an enormous increase (half of the facebook users are mobille only).

Eighty percent of smartphones shipped today are running android. This shows that android is starting to takeover apple iOS. This is also shown in tablets where android is also more sold nowadays than the iPad while the iPad currently still is the most used tablet based on network traffic measurements.

In terms of security, android shows a higher number of malware apps than apple iOS. Also in terms of enterprise security policies, VPN handling, etc, iOS is way ahead of android with for example enterprise single sign on and VPN per app.

The iOS first approach to develop an app seems to be the way to go in radiology because of the wider acceptance and use of apple devices.

To develop an app the steps to take are identify concept, user interface design, programming, construct app, and finally polish the app.

RSNA 2013 - RC126 - Health IT tools to Improve quality and safety in radiology

A crucial point in quality metrics is the choice of the right measures. These measures should be selected such that they can be used to identify problems, not making the department look good. Metrics that are repeatedly in range should be droppen since they are not providing information to improven. The national quality forum can help to identify the radiology measures for quality. However they only include 2 dedicated radiology metrics.

Employee engagement is very important to succesfully improve quality. An example was given showing that metrics were used to stimulate radiologists to meet them by connecting the number of metrics met to a financial reward. This worked remarkably showing a much better quality performance after this reward was implemented.

Another vital part of quality improvement is root cause analysis. Just recording problems and fixing them does not improve quality, taking the time to get to the root cause and solving it does.

HIMSS Europe

Starting October 31, the first HIMSS Europe in Amsterdam. A two day event on advancing innovation and and best practice in European Health IT.

Visit the website at http://www.himssamsterdam.eu for more information.

Infographic Health Informatics

This infographics by the University of Illinois at Chicago gives details on what Health Informatics is and which role it will play in healthcare in the future. They state that the future is in desperate need of a large number of health IT professionals that will help to keep the healthcare system affordable.

This link will give you access to the original on the website of the University of Illinois: http://healthinformatics.uic.edu/resources/infographics/the-intersection-of-healthcare-and-it/

Full version to be found here

CARS 2013 - Image Distribution and Cloud Computing

Aryanto presented on an institutional DICOM data distribution system called RadTransceiver. They have built an environment to distribute DICOM data throughout the health enterprise using a webbased, standards based, environment. The setup allows easy distribution using different protocols either with or without anonymization.

Mahmoudi touched the topic of medical image annotation and retrieval. This group from Belgium uses CBIR to support a decision support system by providing similar previous exams based on a query image.

A zero footprint application of mobile devices in radiolgy was presented by dr. Engelmann. He showed that starting early this century the developments of mobile devices for medical image review has progressed steps until their now marketed product that is device independent and available from CHILI as CHILI/Mobile.

Final presentation by Kondoh on development of hybrid medical record sharing system, EPR and PACS of each hospital on cloud technology plus XDS and XDS-I on cloud technology.

IHE for Dummies - Free eBook NOW available!!!

Interoperability for Dummies, IHE Edition provides practical advice for understanding the ins and outs of healthcare interoperability! This helpful book tells you what you need to know about leveraging IHE to improve your organization’s ability to share patient information—securely and efficiently. Topics discussed in this eBook include:

IHE Basics: find out how IHE can help you meet your interoperability goals.
Secure Document Sharing: examine the current state of document exchange, look at some different scenarios for exchanging information, and find out how IHE is improving the process.
Get Involved: Discover the many opportunities IHE offers for stakeholders and clinicians to work together.
The complimentary eBook is now available!

Follow this link

RSNA 2012 - Next Generation Infrastructure for Medical Imaging

Interoperability and Integration—from HL7, DICOM, IHE, to SOA

Modern radiology workflow requires consumption, choreography, and orchestration of content from multiple disparate information systems that do not natively “talk to each other.” Without optimal integration and interoperability amongst these systems, humans are required to serve as “integrating agents:” this frequently results in inefficiency and error because humans are not good as a integrating agent.
Examples of practical integration strategies that have been used successfully are web viewer EHR integration, single sign-on, RIS vs PACS driven workflow).
Advanced integration strategies, include using vendor APIs, state aggregation, SOA, and IHE.
Interopability is not just about single logon but should address the integration of the different software tools on a granular scale.
IT should move from choreography to orchestration. Instead of just providing a static edge environment, a more versatile system should be available which is loosely coupled using a middle (bus) layer and move towards a service oriented architecture. A component based architecture that supports composite applications and orchestrates these applications into complex workflows.
SOA is, according to dr. Chang, not going to work in healthcare although everyone else is doing it since healthcare IT groups will not make the effort to go for SOA. However, applications can be implemented to mimic a similar environment collecting and combining all available data in the hospital that can go into a dashboard. In this action, normalization of medical data is essential.

Image Sharing—A Fond Farewell to CDs

We are currently moving from sharing data on CDs to Sharing healthcare information in the cloud. Although it is solving part of the problems with CDs a major concern becomes security and confidentiality when moving to network sharing. Some proprietary enviroments are available but the industry should move to the available standards. The IHE XD profiles should be used when applicable.

RSNA 2012 - IT should be embraced by radiology

As stated by the cover story of today's RSNA daily bulletin, IT is required to become a value innovator in radiology. In future radiology, IT influence should not be restricted to RIS and PACS, but extend to embracing new developments in mobile computing, social networking and virtual collaboration.

3Gear kinect gesture based interaction system

Check out 3Gear systems for their approach to use two kinect cameras to track motion.

According to their website their technology enables the Kinect to reconstruct a finger-precise representation of what the hands are doing. This allows us to build simple and intuitive interactions that leverage small, comfortable gestures: pinching and small wrist movements instead of sweeping arm motions, for example.

Emerging mHealth: Paths for growth

PWC published a report entitled "Emerging mHealth: Pahts for growth" that shares the results of a global research study about the opportunities and challenges of mobile health from the perspective of patients, payers and providers. The pdf of the report can be found here. The presentation on the report can be found on slideshare here. 

Monitoring of Health IT systems

According to a webpublication of Hospital IT Europe, there are five steps to simplify IT infrastructure monitoring. These steps are:


1.  Filter your data to only show information which is relevant - minimise the noise
2.  Correlate your monitoring data to identify where you need to focus resources
3.  Track end-user experience to identify changes in performance before the users notice
4. Outsource your infrastructure monitoring to a dedicated managed service provider (MSP)
5. Install modelling software


For a description of the steps, please visit the HITE website.

DIY (Diagnose It Yourself) Medicine Begins With An Open Source Reinvention Of The Stethoscope

Check this great movie showing the capabilities of home operated devices. http://www.healthimaginghub.com/index.php?option=com_jomtube&view=video&id=547

RADbook available for free for the iPad

RADbook 2012 is now available for free for the iPad. The RADbook app provides a 168 page overview of what is available on the radiology market today subdivided into 11 categories. These categories are: IT, CT, MRI, Interventional, Mammo, R/F, Nuclear, Displays/Printers, Ultrasound, Injectors, and Testing Devices.

It provides a listing of the available devices/systems with a direct link to the website of the vendor. A valuable tool for anyone looking to buy new equipment.

Study: Poor health IT implementation planning affects patient care

Every hospital is running IT implementation plans and has procedures and regulations to follow and obey to. In all cases it is advocated and believed that implementation of new IT systems such as Electronic Patient Records, and Radiology and Hospital Information Systems will have positive effects on the Healthcare institutions involved in increase of productivity and decrease of cost. However, planning is everything in projects like these as was shown by a paper in the American Journal of Managed Care.
A poorly planned health IT implementation can have deleterious effects on the quality of patient care, and can even increase inpatient mortality, according to an article published in the March edition of theAmerican Journal of Managed Care.
Study: Poor health IT implementation planning affects patient care

The Future of Integrated Health Care 2015

Check out this interesting movie on youtube. Is this where we are going??

The Future of Health Care is a subject that has been under intense speculation and debate in recent times across different forums. Several interesting prototypes and scenarios have been made by professionals and designers to give the World a glimpse of a fuzzy future.

Ergonomidesign have made it possible to actually experience the future of Health Care. Following their launch at the Medica/ Compamed trade fair (in Düsseldorf, Germany, Nov. 17-19), Ergonomidesign will present and demonstrate a future life science application that brings together 40 years of design experience for Ergonomidesign in the Life Science industry. This video is one of 2, that give an overview of the entire concept.

Is the end of the CD era approaching?

The distribution of patient imaging data on CDs and DVDs is commonplace in almost every hospital in developed countries. However, with the increasing demand on imaging and the increase in the amount of data generated at each acquisition, the number of CDs and DVDs is increasing dramatically and the flood of portable media is almost impossible to handle. Network based sharing over the internet using secure protocols and profiles such as XDS(i) could solve the problem. Read the story from the HIMSS by Healthcare Technology Management for more information. HIMSS: Is the end of the CD era approaching?

Health data protection standards developed by ISO

Hospital IT Europe featured an article on a new standard developed by ISO which focuses on health data protection.

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has published a new technical specification which will increase protection of personal health information processed, stored and transferred by computer systems for subsequent use by clinicians and others in healthcare organisations. 

ISO/TS 14265:2011, Health informatics - Classification of purposes for processing personal health information defines a set of high-level categories of purposes for which such personal health information can be processed.

The abstract from the ISO website describes the standard as:

ISO/TS 14265:2011 defines a set of high-level categories of purposes for which personal health information can be processed. This is in order to provide a framework for classifying the various specific purposes that can be defined and used by individual policy domains (e.g. healthcare organizations, regional health authorities, jurisdictions, countries) as an aid to the consistent management of information in the delivery of health care services and for the communication of electronic health records across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries.

The scope of application of ISO/TS 14265:2011 is limited to Personal Health Information as defined in ISO 27799, information about an identifiable person that relates to the physical or mental health of the individual, or to provision of health services to the individual.

Study: U.S. leads other countries in health IT adoption

The U.S. is a leader in health IT use and adoption by physicians, according to a new eight-country study from consulting, technology services company Accenture. The study, which includes Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain and the U.S., shows that the U.S. is one of the few countries in which health IT penetration is nearly equal among primary physicians and specialists.

Study: U.S. leads other countries in health IT adoption

GE Healthcare and Microsoft unite to form Caradigm developing clinical apps on open technology platform

GE Healthcare and Microsoft have announced senior executives and the name of their joint health IT venture, which was announced in December. 

The new company, called Caradigm, is expected to launch in the first half of this year.

By developing clinical apps on an open and interoperable technology platform, Caradigm seeks to outfit health systems with system-wide intelligence meant to improve population health management.

Hospital IT Europe