Digital Access to Imaging Expands
HealthMark Group acquired Purview, signaling a growing market emphasis on providing seamless digital access to medical imaging. The move suggests informatics teams will face increasing demand to ensure imaging data is easily shareable through EHRs and FHIR APIs to support acute and telehealth care.
- An estimated two-thirds of radiological images are still shared via physical discs, a practice that acquisitions like this aim to modernize by moving complex DICOM files to the cloud. Purview's technology is already used by five of the top ten children's hospitals in the U.S. to enable this transition. - From an ICU nurse's perspective, poor EHR usability is a significant source of frustration, linked to burnout, documentation burden, and cognitive overload from redundant data entry and workflow misalignments. Informatics nurses can address these issues by redesigning EHR interfaces and optimizing clinical workflows, drawing on their direct patient care experience. - Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a critical standard for enabling the exchange of imaging data within EHRs like Epic. It uses modern web technologies to allow different systems to communicate, which can reduce the need for clinicians to log into separate PACS platforms to view images. - To transition into nursing informatics, credentials like the ANCC Nursing Informatics Certification (NI-BC) are valuable. Eligibility for this certification can be met through a combination of clinical practice hours, informatics-specific work hours, and continuing education. - Federal regulations from the ONC and CMS, stemming from the 21st Century Cures Act, mandate increased interoperability and patient access to their health information via APIs. These rules are a major driver for health systems to adopt technologies that make data, including medical images, more liquid and shareable. - Epic systems offer various integration points for imaging, including APIs for patient context synchronization and web integrations for launching enterprise image viewers directly from the patient chart. This prevents workflow disruptions where clinicians would otherwise have to manually open a patient's record in multiple systems. - Becoming a "super-user" on a clinical unit is a common entry point into informatics, providing experience in training staff and offering feedback during technology rollouts. This hands-on experience is highly valued and can be a stepping stone to more formal informatics roles without an initial advanced degree. - A common complaint from ICU nurses is the significant time spent on documentation within the EHR, which detracts from direct patient care. Nurses with informatics training can analyze these workflows and leverage their clinical expertise to design more efficient systems, directly addressing a major pain point for their peers.
