As imaging and IT professionals look past Thanksgiving and toward RSNA, a new report spotlights emerging strategies for radiology technology: vendor neutral archives, clinical decision support, secure image exchange and more.

"Medical imaging is one of those segments in healthcare that has been (and is still) advancing extremely fast but not always fast enough for providers," write peer60 researchers Chris Jensen and Taylor Madsen in the new report, "Trends in Medical Imaging Technology 2015."

"With these advancements come considerable improvements to workflow as IT solutions are now status quo. Technology advancements in PACS and now with an increasing adoption of VNA's, much higher volumes of images can be captured, analyzed, shared and stored," they add. "Unfortunately, in some cases, this is actually increasing the workload of imaging professionals."

With imaging reimbursement on the downslope, the report seeks to highlight trends and new products that can drive value for hospitals, enabling better workflows and reduced workloads.

Among the questions peer60 posed to the 554 imaging professionals it polled was what they see as the "most exciting new imaging IT technology." The results show an eagerness to move beyond a RIS/PACS-based world:

• Cloud-based image sharing (26 percent)
• VNA (23 percent)
• Advances in dose management (16 percent)
• Clincal decision support (11 percent)
• Universal viewers (9 percent)
• Analytics (7 percent)
• CAS (5 percent)


The study also offers an interesting breakdown of respondents' favorite imaging IT vendors by title (chiefs of radiology, PACS admins, IT managers, etc.), category (functionality, integration, cost efficiency, etc.) and solution (speech recognition, decision support, image sharing, etc.)

Access the full report here.