But, after sifting through our notes, and taking the time to breathe, a few key themes and big-picture takeaways from the show clearly emerged:
Across the industry, cloud solutions in enterprise imaging are leading to improvements in patient care through technological advancements. In fact, we noticed less hardware vendors and more software vendors than ever at this year’s show. In addition, large established hardware vendors – GE being a prime example – were emphasizing the move to cloud-based software solutions.
This focus on accessible patient data and improvements in patient care are driven by technological innovations across radiology. Right before the show we announced two new customers putting these practices into action – St. Luke’s University Health Network and Boston Children’s Hospital. St. Luke’s looked towards technology as a method of empowering patients to take control of their own healthcare and to actively provide higher quality care as healthcare costs rise.
An additional customer announcement we were thrilled to make leading up to RSNA was San Diego Health Connect. The partnership with San Diego Health Connect image-enables their health information exchange (HIE) network and offers providers a streamlined way in which to exchange and view medical images. Image enabling HIE networks is part of the greater move towards interoperability across the healthcare network.
Ambra is also proud to be one of the first seven vendors to complete the RSNA Image Share Validation Program which is in collaboration with the Sequoia Project and dedicated to providing patients with easy access to imaging. Mariann Yeager, CEO of The Sequoia Project says, “vendors who achieve the RSNA Image Validation seal are empowering their physicians to more readily exchange medical images with other providers and their patients across multiple technology platforms to enhance quality of care, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.”
A key element of interoperability is the inclusion of all imaging data; both DICOM and non-DICOM imaging. As healthcare initiatives like Cancer Moonshot continue to receive funding, imaging data will be key players in creating a nation-wide clinical trial network based on genetic profiling. Boston Children’s Hospital, an Ambra Health customer, has adopted Ambra to image-enable their cardiology clinical trial program. With Ambra, non-DICOM imaging can easily be wrapped with a DICOM header for quick storage and access.
And what about the mining of the large imaging data sets established by Moonshot? AI was on the table as a solution for improving patient care. Machine learning, a set of algorithms that can learn complex patterns, can make predictions from data. This type of learning has shown a lot of promise in areas important to radiology, such as image recognition.