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Today’s CIO’s and healthcare IT professionals need to manage an enormous array of systems and technology that span and serve the entire institution. Add to that the fact that technology is constantly changing and evolving, and it’s no wonder how any CIO or IT professional can keep pace with all of what’s “out there.”
Most of you are likely familiar with vendor-neutral archive technology, or VNA, which was designed for imaging interoperability. Fujifilm’s Best in KLAS Synapse® VNA provides secure, easy-to-manage storage, and allows access to the complete patient imaging record. It also integrates with electronic health records (EHRs) and health information technology (HIT) systems to provide the complete patient health picture.
But let’s examine the roots of VNA—why VNA came about and took hold—so we can better understand the reach of this technology now.
As many may recall, it all started with picture archiving communication systems (PACS). For more than four decades radiology departments have used PACS to manage and archive DICOM images. But as more vendors entered the market with their own variations of PACS technology and DICOM conformance, the ability to easily exchange and view images among different PACS systems became challenging. Add in the influx of specialty departments now curating images in a variety of non-DICOM formats—AVI, MPEG, WAV, JPG, PDF, PNG—and it’s clear why the VNA was born. It presents a simple, all-inclusive image archive and management solution.
Perhaps you’ve helped choose and implement a VNA solution for your organization. If so, then you well know how VNAs are changing the way clinical teams capture, view, store, manage, and distribute medical images and patient content. They are the wings, if you will, that are empowering clinicians across the enterprise to work more swiftly, more collaboratively, and to drive better patient outcomes.
Let’s take just one example. Think about how VNA technology can boost surgical efficiency and help improve patient care. After all, today’s surgeons require the same content sharing and storage capabilities that were once the domain of radiology. Consider, for instance, how previously collected enterprise-wide images or videos may be useful during surgical planning and pre-op. But how can surgeons quickly have these images at their fingertips?
With Fujifilm’s Synapse Mobility Enterprise Viewer, PACS and 3D, content is retrieved directly from the source archive (PACS, VNA, etc.) and accessible to the user from a PC, mobile device or browser. The benefit of an enterprise viewer is the ability to provide access to the patient’s full medical imaging record in the EHR, regardless of the specialty department in which it was acquired. Enterprise viewers can display multiple images simultaneously, display patient photos, and play patient-centric video or audio content.
The comprehensive Fujifilm Synapse solution also enables surgeons to be productive and efficient in surgical planning wherever they might be working—in the hospital setting, at their office, off-site, at home, and so on.
Now let’s take it a step further. Once in the OR, a surgeon may need to reference previous PACS images (MRI, CT, ultrasound, etc.) viewed alongside endoscopic images as PiP, PaP, etc., during the procedure itself. With Fujifilm Systems Integration, alongside our VNA or your PACS system, surgeons can access all the images in one place and route them to any monitor destination in the OR. All surgical images and videos captured are saved directly to that patient’s record in the VNA for storage post-procedure, as well as notification to and immediately accessible in the EHR.
With millions of inpatient surgeries performed annually across the nation, today’s busy surgeons demand a holistic, robust workflow solution that provides them with the comprehensive diagnostic imaging they need to perform operations successfully. That’s what our systems integration technology is all about.
There is no need to purchase separate middleware systems or archives by specialty. In addition, the VNA also allows your organization to collapse existing storage silos and can prevent multiple specialties from purchasing on-going departmental solutions. This is more efficient because the enterprise-wide needs can be better achieved with a single platform. It’s also more cost-effective because separate departmental solutions require their own support, maintenance, and integration—and that can add up to big dollars.
OR integration technology from Fujifilm, coupled with Fujifilm’s VNA technology, allows clinicians to integrate more specialties, more devices, and more data than any other system on the market—all from one central data repository.
Think about how your healthcare organization can benefit from Fujifilm’s VNA paired with OR integration technology. They can help your surgeons perform more successfully and make your quality metrics soar. With the right technology, good things take flight.