Siloed Data hinders effective care
Have you been to a doctor recently? If you have, you probably sat in their office as they asked you about your health. While they were doing that, they probably spent most of their time typing your answers into a computer. Most everything in medicine today is “documented” in an Electronic Health Record (EHR). Gone are the days of the family doctor who knew everything about you. Medicine today is practiced by specialists. You see a gastroenterologist for gut issues and a dermatologist for skin issues and on and on. That doctor typing into the computer is an attempt to gather and store all your data in single location so other doctors don’t have to go over the same information with you again.
While that has become the norm for “information,” it is still the exception for medical images. For example, if you get a CT scan, the system that creates, stores and views that image is very specialized software and is not available to most physicians outside of the Radiology/Imaging department. It is definitely not available if you should ever be seen at a different hospital. The same is repeated in the pathology department. If you have blood work done, Pathologists often take pictures of the slides, or if the lab is equipped, do a whole slide scan to create a digital picture of that slide. The Pathology report becomes part of your health record, but the images rarely leave the archive within the Pathology department.
Why is this a problem? While modern medicine relies on the specialists, they are still treating one person…us! What happens in one part of our body affects the whole body. And as we know, pictures speak louder than words. Storing images and their information in departmental solutions limits access to the information and cannot be used as part of the patient history. This hinders the efficiency of providing effective care.
Apollo’s enterprise imaging solution, arcc®, solves that problem. Rather than storing images in “siloed” hospital departmental solutions (or even on a workstation somewhere), health systems can centrally store the images in arcc and provide viewing access via the EHR, or from the solution directly using one system accessible by all. This enables clinicians to have a longitudinal “view” of our health record. Using Apollo arcc, every clinician can view all the related patient images from various specialties, and over time of our health history. This leads to better diagnosis and “Better Care Through Pictures.” Contact us to learn more or see a demo of how arcc can help you create efficient workflows to drive effective care.
