Healthcare provider organizations working out interoperability strategies must include medical imaging in their tactical initiatives. 

Hospital CIOs now recognize that it’s no longer a question of whether vendor neutral archive (VNA) is a technology they should consider, but rather when is the right time to introduce VNA to their IT organization.

The Green Mountain State is in the news for more than the entry of Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders into the 2016 race for president. A pilot healthcare-delivery project there experiments with removing a rule currently requiring patients to get pre-approval from their health plans for MRIs. 

Medical IT and technology company Sectra has announced its acquisition of it-mark, a Danish company specializing in cloud services to the business and healthcare sectors.

Perception: The dose wars and the slice wars are so five years ago, and imaging equipment isn’t where the action is anymore, anyway. Everyone is extending life cycles until scanners are about driven into the ground. You want action in radiology? Look to big data, analytics, informatics and other “wonders-of-computing” spheres. 

Football injuries to NFL players have given the game a black eye. But now some good is coming of the risk, and it has much to do with a promising use of CT imaging.

For vendor-neutral archive technology, a funny thing happened on the way to HIMSS15. Over the past couple of years, healthcare providers have recognized en masse that simply setting up a VNA to store all manner of patient-associated content is just dipping a toe in the VNA water. 

At a time when 85% of physicians are viewing diagnostic images via electronic medical records, the opportunity is ripe to realize true enterprise imaging. More of those docs should be saying goodbye to walled-off image silos and hello to a centralized, always-open image depot.