In the past week, the streets of New York have been flooded with individuals aimlessly walking and sometimes even sprinting around the city aggressively searching for Pokemon characters within the ‘Pokemon Go’ mobile application game. Often, the users’ search comes up with nothing, and they fall behind the ranks amongst their competitors.
Unfortunately, this frantic search is all too familiar in hospitals across the country when doctors hop from one department to another in an attempt to access, recover, or upload patient images. In fumbling with outdated PACS hardware and CDs, doctors are wasting time and money, while also exposing patients to avoidable health risks.
Now, let’s think of an alternative. In this version of the game, doctors don’t wander looking for images; with automatic routing rules and web-based image sharing, the images come to them. Seamless image upload, electronic transfer from a web-based browser, and mobile access to all the images is avaliable in the doctor’s network. In this world, while it may look like doctors are wandering the halls of their practice with Pokeman Go, they’re actually viewing patient images via the DG mobile viewer on their iPad. No chasing involved here! The risk of losing images with a system failure or unreadable CDs is nullified. In the world of healthcare, this is what the DG suite does.
In the realm of healthcare, DG’s functionality and frictionless image exchange can make all the difference in patient outcomes. So, what if this was applied to Pokemon Go?
All the best Pokemon are automatically searching for you. You can capture any one you want without the risk of failure. You’d be able to seamlessly trade pokemon with anyone, regardless of network. You’ll be able to view you Pokemon from anywhere, at anytime. Useful Pokemon health and strength information will be integrated with Pokemon images. Additionally, if your screen freezes upon Pokemon capture, your new friend will be saved in a scalable vendor neutral cloud archive, allowing no more business continuity mishaps. Looks like there wouldn’t be much you’d have to do at all. They’d probably have to change the name to “Pokemon Come,” and I don’t think that would be quite as fun.
Well, maybe Pokemon Go and DG don’t exactly have much in common – and we’re okay with that. In the world of medical image management it really is of the utmost importance to “catch them all.” Access to the right images, in the right place, at the right time can make all the difference for patient outcomes. If you feel like your facility is having trouble catching them all, you might be suffering from silo syndrome, and we have the cure right below!
Catherine Slotnick is a passionate healthcare marketer with a deep interest in the latest & greatest in the Health IT space. As Ambra Health's senior marketing manager, Catherine primarily focuses on creating and sharing thought leadership content in the radiology and informatics space. Catherine graduated from the University of Virginia with a BA in Psychology & Art History. When she's not writing, she enjoys cooking and petting dogs that aren't hers.
