In today's healthcare environment, the bottom line for providers is to maximize value with every decision made. That’s why a technology upgrade that improves care and the patient experience on multiple fronts can be a game changer.

Heading up the Johns Hopkins Medicine Technology Innovation Center, Gorkem Sevinc, MSE, CIIP, focuses the bulk of his attention on partnering with clinical and research personnel within Hopkins Medicine to collaboratively build innovative Health IT tools. Software development, IT infrastructure, workflow and collaboration tools are all part of his purview.

Give it up, buy in and figure it out. In short, that was the message from Kevin McEnery, MD, to his fellow informaticists at the recent meeting of the SIIM, Inner Harbor, Maryland.

It’s no secret that healthcare in the U.S. provides comparatively poor value. That’s not an opinion. It’s a fact, as costs are high relative to outcomes compared to other Western nations. What can the profession of radiology do to help reduce the former while simultaneously improving the latter?

As a broad concept, good consumer value isn’t hard to get a handle on. Varying definitions abound, to be sure, but the phrase is widely understood as shorthand for the best you can get for the least you have to spend without sacrificing too much on quality within a given product or service category.

The “CD factory” had to go. That was the consensus reached four years ago by all parties involved in the handling of diagnostic images at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), the regional healthcare hub in Western New York anchored by 800-bed Strong Memorial Hospital.

Mid-Atlantic gained an appreciation for simplicity after installing a new PACS from Viztek in June 2014. Under the new workflow, staff members employ a one-click process and studies flow seamlessly into a patient’s folder.

If hospitals and integrated delivery networks are to leverage the potential of big data to significantly improve the health status of populations across the U.S., they are going to need a new kind of physician leader to light the way.