Chief information officers (CIOs) wield substantial power in shaping the future of hospitals and healthcare networks in the U.S. As hospitals become more business-like in their operation and management, the challenge of linking hospitals, physicians groups and health-care service organizations almost always winds up in the CIO’s lap. The ability to link files and share information securely represents a serious challenge.
Hospital computer departments started many years ago with traditional data centers and main-frame computers. The move to client server technology is complete at most hospitals, but not all yet. The further development of local area, wide area and virtual private networks are now the most popular method of sharing files between departments, buildings and mobile professionals.
Maintaining perspective and a strategic plan are the two most important assets that CIOs bring to their organizations on a daily basis, as the capital spending budget for IT exceeds every other medical specialty in healthcare, and is growing at the fastest rate as well.
The technologies that CIOs are evaluating today should provide imaging specialists with additional insight for discussion with their favorite vendors, and possibly some ideas for new vendors at the next tradeshow.
Wireless
It seems that every part of a hospital now has signs indicating that the use of cellular telephone is not allowed. But it is increasingly striking to discover physicians, nurses and administrators starting to employ the use of point-of-care workstations, PDAs and other wireless devices for updating patient charts and issuing orders.
Radiologists should soon have wireless PDAs that keep them informed of their worklists and follow-up contacts that are both pending and completed. These devices allow the department management to proceed smoothly, while the radiologist becomes more mobile, but still connected to the workflow of the department.
Voice
The most important pieces of data from the medical profession are the spoken words, which are captured and translated from dictation devices — the former hub of hospital technology 30 years ago. Voice recognition systems are beginning to penetrate beyond the fringes of technically sophisticated sites, and are clearly expected to provide productivity gains throughout healthcare. If you’ve called an airline for reservations or requested directory assistance, then you’ve experienced the new levels of voice recognition technology in the market today. The key is providing constraints in vocabulary, and combining this with more advanced and faster computer power.
Radiologists in a few centers have adopted full voice-recognition dictation systems, and have thrived — after the expected roll-out issues. Five years from now, these systems will be widely used, providing faster access to reports for physicians and healthcare providers, which is the real benefit of deploying these systems.
Electronic medical records
Going digital — and thus giving up paper as a means of communication and archiving — is the most daunting technical challenge for every hospital. The use of paper forms and records is almost as old as the practice of medicine, and carries the perspective of hard documentation. The creation of digital archives to support patient charts and records is a massive undertaking, and access to these files creates hierarchies of storage based on speed of access. While doctors and nurses can be persuaded to make notes on digital devices that immediately update the patient charts, incorporating the many other specialties in healthcare carries unique challenges.
Radiology files, for example, are tremendously large (Gigabyte file sizes are becoming almost standard in CT and other leading modalities), and can swamp ordinary hospital networks. The most likely solution for radiology in this context will be a separate and parallel image network system (PACS) that does not overburden the hospital network system over which patient data files flow. A side benefit is that these networks can act as backups, albeit at slower speeds, to each other if either fails at some point.
Basics of healthcare
While many of these technologies are well known to business travelers, it’s encouraging to see that they are finally working their way into main-stream healthcare applications at hospitals large and small. They carry the benefit of making healthcare — always a nervous time for most of us when we are patients — seem a little more secure, and that the physicians and nurses have time to concentrate on us, the consumer, not the paperwork.
Doug Orr, president of J&M Group (Ridgefield, Conn.), consults with medical device companies in strategy and business development for emerging growth markets, notably radiology and cardiology. Comments and suggestions can be sent to [email protected].
