Using intelligence to improve care

The Healthcare Data Landscape

This idea of a data explosion is not a new one, but understanding how to manage it has proven elusive thus far. A driving factor of this shift has been not only the growth in the number of devices being used, but also how smart they are and how much information they collect. At the same time, health systems are caring for a larger number of patients because of both the growing population and health system expansion. As more individual clinics and hospitals need to interoperate across multiple devices and broader health systems, the complexity of this situation grows even greater.
 

“The amount of data that health organizations have to deal with is growing at exponential speed, but the potential to use it to improve care is not yet fully realized.  By linking imaging to information from other sources we can create a rich patient profiles,” Jeroen Tas, CEO Connected Care and Health Informatics at Philips, shared in his blog post earlier this week.

Our new innovations introduced at RSNA this week such as Illumeo with adaptive intelligence and our latest release of IntelliSpace Portal (9.0) build on our vision that information technology will enrich the value of existing imaging technologies and thus the role of the radiologists, by making them fully connected members of a networked care team, all working from a detailed longitudinal view of the patient.

Both solutions are part of Philips IntelliSpace integrated portfolio of healthcare informatics solutions.

In that same environment, one of the key tasks CIOs have is to manage their infrastructure in a cost-effective manner. This includes ensuring IT systems are secure, sufficient disaster recovery is in place, and performance is both reliable and scalable. At the same time, these CIOs need to implement solutions that will convert all of this data being collected into something actionable that can help physicians make informed decisions to improve patient care. Intelligent tools and algorithms that can interpret data and understand clinician workflow are critical to ensuring that the care team receives the right data in the right format in the right – and complete – patient context.

Understanding the Patient

Today, clinicians don’t have access to all of the data actually being gathered by the systems and devices within the hospital. Primary investments – like EMRs – manage and produce quite a bit of structured text data, but do not manage unstructured data. However, unstructured data from fields like radiology, genomics and digital pathology gather critical patient data that offers a more complete picture of a patient and can enable personalized medicine. In most cases, this unstructured data is not available to the person making the clinical decision.

Solutions that provide access to the complete package of data to offer clinical context in a secure environment is important. When making treatment decisions, radiologists need to have all of the relevant information about a patient readily available in order to understand that unique individual’s situation and to better personalize care.

Interoperable systems and platforms that unify and present curated, analyzed information keeps care teams connected and drives toward enhanced diagnoses. With this in mind the new Philips Illumeo technology automatically provides the radiologist with the most relevant case-related information from various different sources in one single view.

Streamlining Care

A patient’s care team spans multiple modalities across a hospital and unifying these resources through technology provides more efficient workflows for those responsible for providing the best possible patient care. Streamlining workflows across these modalities through end-to-end solutions allows for better, faster image analysis which enables radiologists to handle a larger number of patient cases more efficiently and offer confidence diagnoses and treatment options.
 

As CIOs seek ways to maximize radiologists’ time in other ways, setting up applications on the network that allow radiologists to use any workstation is a valuable tool. Traditionally, radiologists need to use specific computers in assigned rooms. By allowing them to use any workstation, the health system ensures they are maximizing their existing resources, while also allowing radiologists greater flexibility and access to do their analyses wherever they are in the hospital.

Making Technology Valuable

As new technologies arise with the intention of improving workflows and patient care, clinicians often find themselves spending more time in front of their computers trying to learn difficult technology. CIOs and vendors are now working to enable them to spend less time in front of the computer and more time with their patients. Ultimately, all technology is meant to enhance the experience of the user. By focusing on integrating intelligence into data and ensuring it is all connected, clinicians are empowered with the relevant context to make confident, more informed decisions to ensure the patient always remains at the center of care.