The health care industry produces an astonishing amount of data: nearly one-third of the world’s data volume. The amount of data health care providers generate can seem overwhelming—and it can overwhelm an organization’s ability to find valuable insights that can help its physicians and its patients.
In Innsbruck, Austria, Tirol Kliniken oversees one of the largest medical vendor-neutral sites in Europe, with a data volume of over 740 TB. This volume contains more than 1 billion objects—both digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) studies and non-DICOM data—and approximately 5 TB of data enter the archive each month.
This rapid growth makes the need for a comprehensive health care data management system more urgent each day. “It would be simply impossible to manage 190 GB of data produced daily without a powerful tool,” says Andreas Nuener, head of IT special systems at Tirol Kliniken.
The growing volume of data is only one part of the challenge. Various data types stored in various formats create an additional hurdle to efficiently storing, retrieving, and sharing clinically important patient data.
Health care providers, physicians, and patients need such a data system to meet several key capabilities:
1. Interoperability. The ability to connect and share information among various IT systems, reducing administrative burden and streamlining workflows, is imperative to delivering high-quality care in the modern health care environment.
2. Flexibility. When an organization adopts one flexible enterprisewide imaging and reporting system to replace distinct software products used by different clinical departments, that solution can eliminate costly redundancies and help reduce total cost of ownership by alleviating factors such as installation, training, maintenance, and upgrades.
3. Modularity. A modular architecture enables health care providers and systems to tailor their enterprise information IT system to their specific needs, such as integrating specialist applications for reading and reporting, AI-powered functionalities, advanced visualization, and third-party tools.
4. Scalability. The solution should be designed to grow with an organization, expanding the number of servers and storage capacity as necessary.
Manage data around patients, not departments
Using information technology to minimize administrative burden and streamline workflow is imperative to delivering high-quality care in the modern health care environment.
A health care enterprise that pairs an open image and data management (IDM) system with an intuitive reading and reporting workspace can consolidate patient data in a single location instead of across multiple data silos.
The aim must be to bring imaging data, diagnostic software elements, and clinical tools together into a single, intuitive workspace for both routine and more complex cases, providing a patient-centric view with all relevant information at hand. With all data accessible and managed in one location, every clinician involved in patient care could trust the reliability of the information they access.
Enhanced patient care
Tirol Kliniken’s robust IDM consolidates patient data and connects systems across the enterprise, enabling simple, standards-compliant connectivity into existing information systems and subsystems, including the Health Information System (HIS) and Radiology Information System (RIS).
The organization’s central universal archive houses nearly all image and multimedia data acquired across five sites that comprise the health care organization and is connected with more than 250 subsystems from more than 100 vendors.
Clinicians use the front end of the IDM either holistically or via the web. Both methods allow health care professionals to access patient data from multiple sources, enabling a higher level of care.
“What I like the most is the versatility and tight integration,” says Dr. Gerhard Pierer, head of plastic, reconstructive, and aesthetic surgery at University Hospital in Innsbruck. “It allows me to have a holistic, patient-centric view on all DICOM and non-DICOM data of my patients.”
Eliminating silos and enabling clinicians to efficiently and securely access clinically relevant information helps Tirol Kliniken turn data into a strategic asset for its health care professionals and the patients they care for.
Learn how Syngo Carbon Core helps health care organizations share greater insights and support the quality of patient care
