January 27, 2011 – Radiology Associates of Sacramento (RAS), the largest private radiology practice in Northern California has expanded its solution suite to include a new interoperability platform. The new suite will include Merge iConnect, by Merge Healthcare.
“In today’s healthcare enterprise, broad interoperability is a requirement,” said Craig Roy, chief information officer of RAS. “Radiology has been digital forever, but many practices were built as silos of information. We see real value in the Merge iConnect strategy of providing a complete solution for bringing our diagnostic content into any healthcare record. We started with the Merge PACS solution for digital imaging within radiology, and added their vendor neutral archive (VNA) to help with image management across the enterprise. However, RAS was using a different vendor for our image distribution. The result was that we had to use a separate cache of images. We just moved to iConnect Access, and so far we are very pleased with the results.”
The system is an interoperability suite that allows providers to view current and historical images and content, regardless of the multiple applications in which they are stored. Access to diagnostic information at the point of patient care is important for detecting and monitoring the progression of disease while enabling faster treatment and reducing duplicate exams. It provides a zero-footprint, zero-download DICOM and XDS viewer that enables diagnostic quality image review for referring physicians.
Diagnostic imaging is widely regarded as one of the most important advances in medicine, yet the images are often not available on demand at the point of care.
For more information: www.merge.com