Two of healthcare’s top data and imaging organizations have released a roadmap for integrating enhanced reporting capabilities across radiology and other imaging-driven specialties.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) unveiled their whitepaper Tuesday in the Journal of Digital Imaging. It outlines the current and desired future goals of interactive multimedia reporting (IMR), and underscores why such tools may become a significant competitive advantage.
“Unfortunately, most specialties today utilize only plain textual descriptions of imaging in dedicated reports or buried in clinical documentation,” Christopher J. Roth, MD, with Duke University’s Department of Radiology and co-authors wrote. “IMR remains a rarity in radiology despite the benefits of integrating longitudinal images, text reports, hyperlinks, tables, timelines, annotations, and other tools,” they added later.
The current state of reporting
Groups overseeing breast imaging and CT lung cancer screening have mandated common language and elements that lend themselves to multimedia reporting. But plain-text, unstructured reports remain the norm, the authors explained.
Rads use a variety of modalities, and procedures and requirements for interactive reporting may vary by case. For those without abnormalities—the bulk of imaging studies—structured data and hyperlinks may be valuable, but annotations and graphs likely aren’t. This variety requires flexibility and standard procedures for a new era of reporting, the group wrote.
But advanced features, such as text hyperlinks to relevant images, can save referring physicians time and keep track of patient histories. Longitudinal tracking tables, for instance, can synthesize crucial lesion information for providers.
Looking forward
Top impediments to change are interoperability challenges between radiology image viewers, speech recognition-based reporting systems and electronic health records, according to Roth and co-authors.
“Today even simple typographical emphases like bold, underline, and italics cannot be reliably transferred from reporting system to HER,” the researchers wrote. “Report hyperlink functionality may raise security challenges when access is expected outside of the host medical facility.”
Even if these challenges and others are solved, some still perceive multimedia reporting as labor- and time-intensive. New capabilities must be quick and easy, and systems will need to enhance compatibility to handle reports from myriad clinics and hospitals.
Champion rads, payers, societies, and physicians must provide an initial push to get this movement going. And if done successfully, the benefits may be tremendous, the authors noted.
“As more healthcare providers and hospitals are financially motivated toward higher quality, higher efficiency care, IMR may become a competitive advantage for practices with interoperable systems that facilitate it, especially if the value of improved communication and patient care can be quantified,” Roth et al. concluded. “As those competitive advantages grow, more practices may grow interested in adopting the workflows, dataflows, and applications supporting IMR. “
Read much more from the full whitepaper here.
Matt joined Chicago’s TriMed team in 2018 covering all areas of health imaging after two years reporting on the hospital field. He holds a bachelor’s in English from UIC, and enjoys a good cup of coffee and an interesting documentary.