VIDEO: Interest rising to connect pathology, other departments to enterprise imaging systems

In the past decade, the trend toward enterprise imaging has mainly focused on connecting the various modalities in radiology into one centralized image and report repository. This is designed to enable easier access to imaging in the electronic medical record (EMR) and easier workflows across imaging. However, many hospital systems are how using enterprise imaging systems to connect many other "ologies" from departments across the healthcare enterprise. 

This movement to consolidate images and other data into one location has expanded to cardiologycould soon hit digital pathology as more hospitals adopt digital slide scanner technology. Beyond these three big users, nearly all health system clinical departments produce images, and hospitals are finding it easier from an IT prospective to integrate the imaging data into one bucket rather than manage dozens of other data storage systems.

Health Imaging spoke with Amy Thompson, a senior analyst at Signify Research, about connecting various departments to enterprise imaging systems. She said all large PACS vendors now have some sort of enterprise imaging offering, or it is in their technology roadmap. While there is still a big demand for standalone radiology PACS systems, interest in enterprise imaging is growing.