Sequoia, RSNA to put image sharing pilot into production
The Sequoia Project is moving its joint image sharing pilot with the Radiological Society of North America out of the testing phase and into production this year, CEO Mariann Yeager said.
Late last year Sequoia and RSNA named seven vendors that qualified under the Image Share Validation program: Agfa Healthcare, AMBRA Health (formerly DICOM Grid), GE Healthcare, Lexmark Healthcare, LifeImage, Mach7 Technologies and Novarad.
The program ensures that the vendors’ systems can exchange medical images accurately and efficiently.
“Enabling health data sharing empowers providers and patients to make better informed care decisions based on complete health data history,” Yeager said. “Another benefit of health information exchange is improved care coordination, which is critical to patient experience and satisfaction, and has also been shown to improve patient outcomes.”
The Image Share Validation pilot project was partially funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). An image conformity assessment program that is now in place will be monitored by the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University, St. Louis.
The validation program is designed to be self-sustaining after its initial launch.
At HIMSS17 Sequoia will also announce new members and build out its Carequality program and the eHealth Exchange.
Carequality is the national-level common exchange framework that brings together electronic health record (EHR) vendors, record locator service (RLS) providers and other types of existing networks from the private sector and government.
Last year, Carequality saw the first record exchange in July of 2016 and has since experiences a huge growth curve with tens of thousands of clinics, hundreds of hospitals, and tens of thousands of clinicians now enabled to share health records. And Sequoia aligned with the CommonWell Health Alliance to bolster data exchange between each organization’s members.
“Health IT interoperability further creates access to patient records to empower patients in their own care, and create robust data research opportunities for those working on initiatives like the Cancer Moonshot,” Yeagar said.
HIMSS17 runs from Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.
