Stanford Children’s Outside Image Management Journey

Ambra empowers Stanford Children’s ability to digest outside imaging studies through various means.

Summary

Stanford Children's Health - Case studyAs Stanford Children’s Health continues to build its regional and national reputation as a leader in maternal, fetal, and pediatric care, the ability to seamlessly move data between institutions and patients will become paramount. Ambra empowers Stanford Children’s to ingest outside imaging studies from a myriad of sources. Thus far, Stanford Children’s has seen several benefits arise from its move to the cloud. By reducing the number of disparate systems to facilitate image exchange, Stanford Children’s has been able to cut costs and move towards one singular system. The predictable nature of a cloud-based SaaS vendor also allows for a regular monthly cost structure, simplified deployment, and employee training and support.

With a strong outside image management suite in place, the future holds many possibilities to leverage its capabilities for clinical research image exchange, read-from-home for 24×7 coverage, and maintaining a complete thin-study index.
Dr. Safawn Halabi, Medical Director of Radiology Informatics

Simplified Deployment Across a Complex Network

Prior to implementing a comprehensive outside image management solution, Stanford Children’s Health utilized disparate systems for peer-to-peer image sharing and CD/DVD ingestion. Recognizing the need to standardize the OIM solution across various regional and national partnerships, Stanford Children’s chose to go with a cloud-based suite, Ambra, to address their comprehensive OIM needs. This allowed their team to focus on the strategic goals of the project rather than worrying about the deployment aspects while also fulfilling many of the anytime, anywhere access requirements.

By reducing the number of disparate systems to facilitate image exchange, Stanford Children’s has been able to cut costs and move towards one singular system.

Lowered Technological Threshold

With many healthcare organizations housing their own IT systems and solutions, it becomes difficult for physicians to gain new insights or engage in collaborative care. The continued goal is to lower the technological threshold that outside facilities and even patients need in order to upload an image into Stanford Children’s Health so that the various specialty and subspecialty providers can effectively deliver quality care. As Stanford Children’s Health continues to partner with regional and national providers, its OIM solution will ultimately need to scale with this growth.

The Ambra cloud medical image management suite allows Stanford Children’s to reach out to its referral base inside and outside its system without technical heavy lifting.

Reduction in Redundant Exams

Like many health systems, Stanford Children’s is expanding their network to bring care to the patient closer to home. Patients are frequently first seen by a primary care physician, then referred to a specialty center for imaging, and then to the main Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital for further diagnosis, and potential treatment. As a result, coordination among these various care providers is absolutely critical, as is the sharing of medical imaging and data. Especially for those in pediatric care, parents are frequently anxious concerning overexposure to radiation for children.

The cloud acts as a solution to making imaging available when and where it is needed, reducing the need for redundant imaging. In addition, Stanford Children’s has been able to leverage their outside image management suite to allow for rapid and efficient image exchange among care providers while enhancing workflows that fire routing rules to successfully automate image sharing processes.

“All stakeholders need to have a vested interest in setting up the OIM solution to gain strategic alignment and improve patient care.”
– Dr. Safawan Halabi, Medical Director of Radiology Informatics