Remember when X-ray abandoned cumbersome film once sleek digital suitors showed up? It happened little by little, not all at once. In much the same way, radiology datasets are leaving cramped hardware spaces for the inexhaustible, ever-flexible expanse of the cloud.

The profession of radiology has largely supported the basic notion behind enterprise imaging, aka EI: All medical images should be readily available to healthcare providers and patients across the care continuum.

Now that hospitals and health systems are finally maximizing the electronic health record, AGFA HealthCare North America President Mark Burgess wants to make sure that they’re not missing out on another critical digital element of connected care: enterprise imaging, including the company’s breakthrough technology enabling the Imaging Health Network™. Think of it as meaningful use taking on the efficient management of medical imaging.

In an increasingly complex and demanding world for radiologists—one in which the word “burnout” is so common that it’s almost become cliché—healthcare IT companies have the unique responsibility and opportunity to ease radiologists’ burdens by rising to address these momentous challenges.

AGFA HealthCare has been dedicated to Enterprise Imaging since 2010. They were first in the industry to build a platform from the ground up—but recently, they’ve stepped up their game. Momentum in market adoption of the platform approach to enterprise imaging is evident in the company’s growing business agreements, as leading health systems select AGFA HealthCare Enterprise Imaging Platform that creates an Imaging Health Record™ (IHR).

Last year the institutional leadership at Texas’s University Health System, which contracts with the UT Health San Antonio physician network, made the decision to move all inpatient imaging off the radiology department’s PACS and onto a new enterprise imaging (EI) platform. Their goal was internal consolidation. 

As recently as eight months ago, cardiologists sitting down to work with medical images at Novant Health had plenty of choices on where and how to go about that part of their jobs.