Over the last few years, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s enterprise imaging strategy has been simmering. After starting with radiology and cardiology, the hospital is preparing to add images from across all ‘ologies and fully bring its enterprise archive to a boil.

Every year, the HIMSS annual meeting tackles the biggest issues in healthcare informatics, and managing medical images is always a big topic of discussion. This year’s focus is on enterprise imaging and the inherent challenges with managing different types of images from the various specialties around a hospital or system.

In order for radiologists to generate the most value for their patients and referring providers, they need to be equipped with all the right tools during their workflow. That includes adequate context in the form of patient data.

Click. Click. Click. An excessive number of mouse clicks—and subsequent ticking of the clock—is not something radiologists want to hear when interpreting an image.

Hailing a taxi used to be a low-tech process. You'd walk out to the street and raise your hand, sometimes whistle, and a nearby cab would see you and take you on your way. Then came Uber.

That old saying "jack of all trades, master of none" can be applied to medical imaging. Even the bright minds that make up the radiology workforce need focused training and years of specific experience in order to understand all the intricacies of the profession, and there's one area in particular where specialized expertise is particularly valuable: mammography.

It's hard to get things done when you're constantly being interrupted. This applies to any task, but is especially true for demanding tasks requiring focused concentration-like interpreting a medical image.

It's no secret that workflows in radiology are changing. A number of factors are impacting interpretation volume, while cutting-edge technologies are transforming how radiologists work.