Medical imaging is full of opportunities to leverage innovative technologies to improve quality of care. From low-dose CT equipment to electronic medical records, radiologists have a long list of health IT at their disposal to implement in the clinical environment.
However, the continuum of care can be hindered by disparate systems that fail to be compatible with one another due to differences in manufacturing. With a range of capabilities and developers, it can be frustrating to sift through the tangle of data when working with a variety of products. But with a universal content viewer, radiologists can eliminate their troubles with viewing imaging content from various sources.
What is it?
According to AuntMinnie.com, there are several common attributes that help define a universal viewer. Typically, it is a scalable technology that displays any clinical content from any source. Despite the diversity of data that radiologists can receive, the product also includes relevant viewing tools that are required to interact with the displayed content.
A universal viewer can be an integral service for image-generating clinical departments, such as cardiology and radiology. Within a single organization, there can be any number of these specialties that produce diagnostic imaging results – oncology, endoscopy and gynecology, to name a few. Each division creates content that is essential to treating patients with the appropriate care, and physicians may need to review PDF reports, JPEG images and faces to determine the correct course of action.
The “universal” component of the viewer reaches beyond DICOM images by providing a content-agnostic archive that is capable of opening all types of formatting. The process is akin to vendor-neutral archives, which have gained considerable popularity in digital imaging departments these last few years.
How to select one?
As with diagnostic radiology equipment, there are many different options to choose from when aiming to purchase a universal viewer. Numerous vendors offer a range of capabilities, so it is important that providers select the product that best suits the needs of their facility. For one, they have to consider who the end users of their service will be.
The viewer should be easy to use, as it will be accessed by anyone, from referring physicians to nurses to patients. Its purpose is to deliver viewing of content to a broad audience of health care stakeholders, so standard functions such as zooming and scrolling through images should be included as some of the more basic tools of the viewer.
Due to its scalability, expanding the features on the service should not impact its ease of use. It should be intuitive and simple in order to be accessed by a range of users.
Finally, as providers look to bolster and expand their services and capabilities, the universal viewer should support multiple types of mobile devices, HealthImaging explained. Smartphones and tablets are being integrated into clinical centers and could be optimized if the viewer is able to include these innovations in its functionality.
Contact Viztek for more information.
Ronny Bachrach
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