The surge in imaging study volume and pursuit of quality has yielded both tremendous benefits and contentious repercussions for patients, providers and payors. But behind the scenes, IT leadership is working on a cardinal issuewhere to store the ballooning number of studies and allow quick recall when needed.

Data are growing in size and scope. Radiology departments and imaging centers face unprecedented bandwidth challenges that stem from the need to store exponentially growing datasets. With bandwidth costs increasing and servers consuming valuable square footage, radiology is on the lookout for a new solution. Cloud storage may fit the bill.

Cloud computing technology—a market that Merrill Lynch values at $95 billion over the next five years—has recently begun to move  into healthcare. However, questions remain about how facilities and departments, including radiology, will fully take advantage of these zero footprint solutions.

Wednesday, March 3, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM Creating a common problem list from diverse EMRs at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center raised challenges despite common terminology. The presenters will describe their solution to these challenges, which impact semantic interoperability.

People who live in healthier counties tend to have higher education levels, are more likely to be employed, have access to more healthcare providers and have more access to healthier foods, parks and recreational facilities, according to a report on the rank of overall health of every county in the U.S. from the University of Wisconsins Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

In the current era of healthcare reform, spawned by the funding made available in the HITECH Act of February's stimulus package, there has been much discussion about producing transparent and quantifiable data on the performance of various departments.

A team of nanomaterial scientists, medical physicists and cancer biologists at the University of North Carolina has developed smaller, lower-cost x-ray tubes packed with sharp-tipped carbon nanotubes for cancer research and treatment. The technology was presented this week at the 2009 meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), in Anaheim, Calif.

For cardiology PACS, the explosion of cardiac-related advances across imaging modalities has created demand for expanded capabilities beyond simple image storage and distribution, providing physicians with access to patient-specific information related to images and reports within the facility or externally. Meanwhile, with this increased volume of image data, cardiologists also need to have access to more extensive patient data, such as hemodynamic monitoring, EKG and electronic medical record (EMR) information to create structured reports.