Facilitating the exchange of diagnostic imaging results

Healthcare professionals seek a seamless end-to-end healthcare experience for their patients, no matter where the patient is. Too often, that is not the experience of patients today. A patient’s medical images and reports are isolated across many information systems residing in many institutions. As a result, healthcare providers are unable to access all relevant images and reports, limiting their ability to accurately diagnose and recommend the best course of treatment for their patients.

The symptoms of this information disparity are far-reaching within diagnostic imaging:

• radiologists are unable to accurately diagnose image results because they have no access to prior results
• family doctors must rely upon courier or the traditional mail system to receive hardcopy diagnostic images and corresponding reports
• specialists are unsure of complete patient history because they do not have access to prior images
• tertiary care services are forced to repeat diagnostic exams because previous exams are unavailable or missing
• This inefficient healthcare process lacks the collaboration capability that vendors seek, healthcare providers need, and patients deserve.

A true Electronic Health Record is the ideal solution

At Karos, we believe that the Electronic Health Record (EHR) can resolve these symptoms and improve the quality of patient care across enterprise, state, and country. Imagine an EHR that:

• provides a consolidated view of the patient’s entire health history
• includes diagnostic imaging results and images
• ensures secure access to patient records for healthcare professionals to efficiently view and share information about their patients
• is independent of geography, allowing access to under-served and rural areas
• is affordable, based on industry standards, and integrates legacy systems.

Karos can simplify clinical information exchange

Building an EHR is a complex task due to the innumerable healthcare enterprises, vendors and systems currently installed in medical enterprises. When you also factor in the multiple information domains, terminologies, legacy data formats and standards in use, the task seems even greater. However, overcoming these challenges to simplify the exchange of clinical information will increase collaboration between healthcare providers and ultimately lead to improvements in patient care.

At Karos Health, our goal is to simplify clinical information exchange. To achieve this goal, Karos Health proposes a clinical information exchange network that connects disparate heterogeneous legacy systems, and resolves complex interoperability and communications challenges, without altering the existing operation of each healthcare institution and provider. Karos solutions preserve legacy systems, while also preparing for future additional information systems and emerging clinical needs.

A new infrastructure leverages existing standards

Karos Health solutions are built upon industry standards and open systems. Karos Health constructs clinical information exchange networks that allow cross-enterprise diagnostic imaging results sharing. The solutions establish a bridge between various information systems, and allow healthcare providers to publish diagnostic imaging results and patient information, so that it can be retrieved from anywhere, anytime. Healthcare providers can view the patient’s entire medical health record whenever needed, providing the means to make better informed medical decisions and improving the quality of patient care.

Partner success provides proof of concept

Since 2006 these solutions have been deployed in the state of Lower Austria. Lower Austria has connected 3,000 clinics and 27 hospitals, allowing healthcare providers to access entire patient profiles and all imaging data, including the most recently published information. With 1.6 million inhabitants, Lower Austria is the second largest state within Austria. Government has prioritized the provision of high quality care to all patients, while increasing the efficiency of healthcare processes, and yet also reducing costs. In a cost-constrained public health system, harnessing e-Health to facilitate the exchange of patient information among distributed care providers is strategic to better serve both urban and remote populations.

Basing the solution on IHE integration profiles (such as XDS) allows the state to minimize integration costs by using existing standards, promoting information exchange that reduces the need for duplicate exams and decreases costs. Regardless of where they are located, healthcare providers working within the state can access the entire patient profile including diagnostic imaging results.

How can Karos help?

Karos has the solutions and expertise to help you solve these problems. For more information contact us. We look forward to collaborating with you.