November 20, 2017 — Ambra Health announced that Atrius Health and Envision Radiology are among the latest leading providers to adopt Ambra for image exchange across their healthcare systems. They join more than 1,000 healthcare providers already using Ambra Health for image exchange and cloud vendor neutral archives (VNA).
Ambra's network is growing at a pace of two new provider gateways per day, according to the company, resulting in more than 3 billion images now managed through the platform. This extensive network and its web upload capabilities have given providers and patients alike the ability to better share, view and store medical imaging. As a result, healthcare providers leveraging the Ambra platform are seeing new procedure revenue and increased patient flow, according to the company. This has improved patient access, while driving down costs. The Ambra platform continues to evolve with the addition of new features such as enhanced interoperability, deeper VNA capabilities and a refined diagnostic viewer user experience. Ambra Health will be showcasing its medical image management solutions at the upcoming Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual conference, Nov. 26-Dec. 1 in Chicago.
Atrius Health, a nonprofit healthcare provider delivering care to more than 740,000 adult and pediatric patients across 34 clinical locations and more than 50 specialties in Eastern Massachusetts, recently adopted the Ambra Health platform. As an outpatient accountable care organization (ACO) operation, Atrius Health frequently receives patient transfers across its wide network. In order to access imaging done at any location outside of their own, radiologists would have to login to the picture archiving and communication system (PACS) of that facility via VPN, creating large amount of logins and passwords to monitor. Sending and receiving CDs of imaging was also a slow and tedious process.
Wth Ambra, Atrius Health can pre-fetch imaging if the patient indicates they had prior imaging done somewhere in the region. "The scheduling staff is able to access the image and provide the prior even before the patient walks in the door, saving valuable staff time and reducing redundancies," said Ray Wilburn RT, MBA, administrative director, radiology at Atrius Health.
Envision Radiology, a leading diagnostic imaging practice with approximately 35 locations across Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, has also seen immediate benefits with Ambra Health for image exchange workflow and as a cloud VNA platform. "The flexibility of Ambra's open imaging platform was a significant draw for us," said Jeff Emery, CIO of Envision Radiology. "With Ambra, we can quickly share imaging with surgeons and specialists and phase out the need for costly and time consuming image transfer via CDs," he added.
Ambra Health's modern, cloud-based medical image management suite eliminates the constraints and complexities of on-premise architecture and allows providers to streamline processes and optimize staff time while future-proofing their image management strategy.
Recent enhancements include:
- New Image Exchange features add the ability to split studies, run multi-part uploads with unique destination filters, set round-robin routing rules and more for better image management, as well as enhanced interoperability with updated XDS capabilities and direct integration to image-enable electronic health records (EHRs) like Athena, Epic and Cerner;
- Deeper cloud VNA features that optimize workflow and efficiency — thin, archive-ready studies can now be auto-generated when an HL7 Observation Result (ORU) is received, together with new filters that allow for granular control of the query-retrieve of imaging studies. New automated DICOM wrapping also allows for more efficient processing of non-DICOM imaging such as photos and videos, a key requirement for any robust VNA; and
- A refined Diagnostic Viewer user experience — the new Personal Accelerator provides a faster experience for physicians on the go who want to view imaging from their laptops, or where internet connectivity is not optimal. In addition, new profile preferences can be set around tooling and annotation, which optimizes the viewer for each physician's unique needs while text annotations can be resized, edited and moved easily, allowing for better readability.
Also at this year's RSNA, Ambra Health will be hosting a cocktail reception in support of RADxx for attendees interested in advancing women in imaging informatics. RADxx is an initiative that fosters networking and mentorship opportunities for women in digital health technologies and imaging informatics. The winners of the inaugural RADxx Awards will be announced during the reception.
For more information: www.ambrahealth.com