By Sara Osberger, Senior Director of Marketing, Fujifilm Medical Systems, U.S.A., Inc.

Radiology and cardiology departments have dominated the enterprise imaging arena for more than 40 years. About one billion radiological imaging exams are performed worldwide every year, making radiology the clear leader in medical imaging volume. Add to that the global surge in echocardiography, cardiac MR, cardiac CT, and cardiac catheterization studies and there you have the lion’s share of all enterprise imaging.

So when it comes to a vendor-neutral archive (VNA), can healthcare professionals use a VNA to collect, store, manage, and share imaging data outside of these two service lines? What about imaging from specialty departments, such as ophthalmology, wound care, or dermatology? Can a VNA manage those images as well?

In order to bring the complete patient picture to the healthcare enterprise, a true VNA can and should be used outside of radiology and cardiology departments. Keep reading to learn more about the many ways your enterprise can benefit from expanding the use of its VNA.

Strengthen Radiology and Cardiology Departments

Although VNAs have applications beyond radiology and cardiology, the bulk of their imaging storage comes from these two service lines. In both radiology and cardiology, the digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) format is king. This file format is produced by CT scans, MRIs, and other prominent types of medical imaging procedures.

Even with the bulk of DICOM images coming from radiology and cardiology, those two departments are often independent of each other and unable to share images. By implementing a single PACS solution or a robust VNA for both departments, healthcare professionals can cross-reference patient imaging.

Improve Image Management across Specialties

DICOM may be the most common medical image format, but many specialties collect images and media in non-DICOM formats as well. This data has undeniable clinical value, particularly as more specialty departments begin to capture patient images. For example, video clips taken during surgery and endoscopy procedures can assist with treatment planning and follow-up care. Although you could attempt to integrate these videos with a traditional PACS, the large file size and need for editing can make integration unrealistic. Additionally, non-DICOM still images have been proven to be difficult to integrate with PACS due to departmental workflows. To overcome this challenge, a VNA helps to make image management across specialties significantly easier.

At the TeraMedica Division of Fujifilm, our Synapse® VNA can handle multiple types of non- DICOM media to seamlessly connect imaging content from more than 30 specialty departments, including:

Enable Essential EHR Interoperability

Most electronic health record (EHR) systems can’t access departmental images through various departmental viewers. This forces physicians to find and reference images, which can be a tedious and frustrating task, not to mention a major roadblock to their workflow. One application for a VNA beyond radiology and cardiology is creating an image-enabled EHR that allows users to view any image type directly within the EHR workflow through the VNA’s enterprise viewer.

Synapse VNA provides full EHR interoperability, so physicians can reference all of a patient’s images directly from the EHR, regardless of the image’s original source or file format. As a HIPAA-compliant VNA, Synapse VNA can also implement rules to limit access to images on a need-to-know basis in an effort to keep sensitive information secure.

Capture Images at the Point of Care

As more enterprises adopt bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, physicians have the ability to capture images at any point during the patient encounter. Emergency care, dermatology, and wound care are already using mobile devices to capture images at the point of care. If your enterprise uses a mobile capture strategy, a VNA can help to minimize PHI risks and securely manage these real-time image captures for your care team.

With Synapse VNA Connext Mobile, for example, physicians can capture images and automatically archive them within the VNA. The VNA then communicates to the EHR that images are available for that patient encounter. Features such as secure sign-on, encrypted transmission, and intelligent data-lifecycle management help keep this tool secure and compliant, while also respecting patient privacy.

Fujifilm TeraMedica Division’s VNA Solution

The right VNA can benefit all departments across the enterprise, not just radiology and cardiology. Synapse VNA from the TeraMedica Division of Fujifilm is designed to provide true interoperability across departments. With Synapse VNA, you can view DICOM and non-DICOM images and share them with other physicians, departments, and facilities, and even with patients.

Whether you’re working in cardiology, radiology, or another specialty department, Synapse VNA can benefit you by:

• Reducing data-storage costs: By simplifying data storage and eliminating the need for expensive data migrations, Synapse VNA can significantly reduce data-storage costs over time.
• Streamlining workflows: Synapse VNA makes it easier to provide image access to physicians, care teams, and the clinical departments that need them, saving time and allowing staff to be more efficient.
• Helping improve patient care: Synapse VNA gives physicians access to all of a patient’s images in one central location. With the full picture of the patient, physicians can make more-informed diagnosis and treatment decisions, helping to improve the overall quality of care.

Applications for Synapse VNA

Synapse VNA connects imaging content across the care continuum, so it has many potential applications. Enterprises that could benefit from Synapse VNA include:

• Large hospitals and healthcare enterprises
• Integrated delivery networks (IDNs)
• Multispecialty healthcare networks
• Pediatric hospitals
• Outpatient imaging centers
• Pharmaceutical companies
• Biotech companies
• Enterprises conducting clinical trials

Contact Fujifilm TeraMedica Division to Learn More

VNAs help to bring the full patient picture to the entire healthcare enterprise. For more information about applications for VNA technology beyond radiology and cardiology, or to schedule a demo of the Best-in-KLAS Synapse VNA, reach out to us today.

By John Hansen, Director of Product Marketing, TeraMedica Division of Fujifilm

Vendor-neutral archive (VNA) technology is changing how healthcare professionals capture, view, store, and distribute medical images and patient content. Radiology departments, for example, have known the value of VNAs for decades. Now as other medical specialties begin to require similar content sharing and storage capabilities, the number of potential use cases for VNA technology is greater than ever.

If you’re looking to invest in a clinical content-management solution, consider the following lessons learned so you can set up your organization for success in the future.

1. Bypassing Enterprise-wide Buy-in

Data capture and management capabilities may not always warrant the attention of the C-suite, department directors, and clinical leaders. However, it’s essential that senior-level decision makers fully understand VNA technology and how it can streamline operations and enhance patient care. This is particularly crucial when trying to ensure enterprise-wide adoption.

A VNA is designed to work across the entire enterprise, not just in one or two specialties. Getting executive level stakeholders involved in the decision-making process allows you to develop a strategy that benefits the entire organization. A senior-led initiative can also help drive enterprise- wide adoption.

Enterprise-wide buy-in can save your organization money by preventing multiple specialties from purchasing departmental solutions (each with support, maintenance, and integration costs) that can better be achieved with a single VNA solution.

2. Using Your VNA in Only a Few Specialties

VNAs aren’t just for radiology and cardiology. As other specialties increasingly generate multimedia content as a byproduct of patient care, it’s essential to leverage the technology across the entire enterprise, rather than in only a few specialties, to help care teams see the full patient picture.

At the TeraMedica Division of Fujifilm, Synapse® VNA was developed on a common platform architecture that clinicians can use in multiple specialties, such as dermatology, wound care, endoscopy, and point-of-care ultrasound. In fact, Synapse VNA integrates more specialties, more devices, and more data than any other VNA on the market.

3. Having No Data Storage Plan

In the past, when clinicians stored medical images on film or other analog media, studies could be checked out, lost, or simply thrown out when they were no longer needed. Obviously, this often resulted in incomplete patient medical records. Now that digital media has dramatically improved the way we store patient images, these records can be archived to preserve pertinent patient health information. They can also help to support future clinical research initiatives, such as in the field of biotechnology, for example. You can read more here about how Synapse VNA can help to fuel tomorrow’s biotech breakthroughs.

If you’re considering purchasing a VNA, you must make data storage and security a top priority. As more specialties leverage imaging to support comprehensive care delivery, and images become larger and more complex, storage technology will also need to keep pace. And it goes without saying, enterprises will need to ensure that these massive volumes of patient data stay safe and secure in the most cost-effective way.

Continuous advancements in storage technologies make it essential to partner with a VNA provider that can keep pace. For example, one whose storage architecture gives you the agility to adopt new storage technologies quickly and easily, and whose image lifecycle management (ILM) subsystem is designed to fully optimize your data storage plan. Synapse VNA’s ILM-centric architecture enables organizations to fully optimize storage. The solution automatically moves content to different storage technologies or tiers as it ages and employs higher compression ratios (if desired) to optimize cost.

4. Using a Piecemeal Approach

Some enterprises favor multi-vendor approaches to image sharing and management. However, advancements in VNA technology have made this unnecessary. Why would you purchase an archive, image viewer, collaboration tools, and worklist from different vendors? A multi-vendor approach turns you, the provider organization, into the test lab—the only place where all the disparate components finally come together. Instead, partner with one supplier that can provide each piece of the enterprise imaging puzzle, and that seamlessly integrates with third-party vendors to help make true imaging interoperability possible. With a single-vendor approach such as Synapse VNA from Fujifilm, you are ensured of seamless integration that is validated by the vendor with each release before arriving at your site.

Learn More from the TeraMedica Division of Fujifilm

With nearly two decades of experience, the TeraMedica Division of Fujifilm remains independently focused on leveraging its clinical capabilities to advance VNA technology, healthcare interoperability, and, most importantly, patient care. As the centerpiece of FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A., Inc.’s comprehensive enterprise imaging portfolio, Synapse VNA provides the industry’s leading image- management solution.

Contact us to learn how the industry’s leading image-management solution can set up your VNA initiative for success.

By Greg Strowig, Vice President – TeraMedica Division of Fujifilm

In today’s multifaceted healthcare environment, providers need to see the whole patient in order to treat the whole patient. Because of this, image capture, storage, access, and management are all crucial components of your enterprise imaging strategy. Healthcare facilities need imaging interoperability, which allows healthcare professionals to exchange information easily, quickly, and securely so that more-informed diagnoses, treatments, and follow-up care can be achieved.

A vendor-neutral archive (VNA) is the solution for enabling imaging access and exchange across the organization and delivers unparalleled advantages to your enterprise imaging strategy.

Why Does Your Healthcare Enterprise Need a VNA?

A VNA allows you to securely capture, store, access, and manage all imaging and related data, regardless of source, file type, format, or image storage system. It also easily integrates with multiple clinical IT environments so that you can see the complete patient picture.

The variety of health information technology (HIT) systems comprising most clinical environments— including electronic health records (EHR), radiology information systems (RIS), and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS)—were originally introduced as departmental or siloed systems. These systems are difficult to integrate and communicate with each other and can slow down clinical workflow, burden IT systems, and even jeopardize care quality as a result.

Healthcare as a whole is evolving to focus on a more holistic approach to patient care. Connecting your enterprise with a VNA can help you achieve this goal, but how will you know which VNA is right for you? The right VNA for your enterprise provides simplified access to comprehensive patient imaging data from a variety of HIT systems to help you make more-informed and impactful clinical decisions.

Consider the essentials of a VNA:

Standards

• DICOM and HL7: Long-enduring standards for image and data interoperability
• DICOM Web and FHIR: The modern evolution of DICOM and HL7
• Native file support
• Image sharing and exchange support
• IHE profiles for cross-enterprise document exchange (XDS and XDS-i)
• Encounters-based workflows
• Application programming interfaces (APIs) that leverage interoperability

Trust

• Data that remains securely in the data center throughout its lifecycle
• Mobile device capture and viewing that leaves no patient data on the device
• Encrypted access to all data
• Sensitive and restricted data segregation
• Leading-edge security protocols
• HIPAA-compliant access to patient data

Storage

• Secure storage of any file type in its native format, in addition to DICOM
• Organized and accessible data
• Lifecycle management
• Dashboards that monitor storage consumption
• Agile adoption of the latest storage technologies

Clinical Connectors

• Multidepartmental solutions
• EHR integration
• Customizable departmental data tagging
• Robust clinical workflows
• Artificial intelligence-ready

Here are the top-four reasons your organization needs a VNA: 

1. Multimedia Storage and Organizational Capabilities throughout Your Enterprise

One of the most notable benefits of a VNA is its storage capabilities and the organization of stored data. A VNA system allows enterprise-wide access to a variety of file types, all from a single location. Regardless of the file type or format, images and patient data can be securely captured, managed, and accessed in a single VNA. With this, physicians can review a complete collection of patient data from a variety of departments and specialties, enabling them to see the full patient picture.

VNAs may offer both digital imaging and communications in medical (DICOM) and non-DICOM image storing, with access and viewing across a range of systems and specialties. This allows for continuous workflows to be achieved and holistic patient care to ensue. Examples of specialty departments and file types include:

• Radiology: MRIs, CT scans, X-rays, voice dictation files, advanced visualization images
• Oncology: Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET), CT scans, X- rays, treatment plans
• Cardiology: Echocardiography (echo), catheterization (cath), nuclear, ECG ultrasounds
• Ophthalmology: Ophthalmology laser images, voice dictations, formatted PDF reports
• Surgery: In-department X-rays, endoscopes, arthroscopes, surgery reports
• Dermatology: Photos, dermatology reports
• Sleep lab: Polysomnograms, sleep study videos
• Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS): Audio-video interleave (AVI), jpegs (JPG), ultrasound reports
• Wound care: Photographs, reports
• Endoscopy: MP4, JPG, endoscopes
• Ear, nose, and throat: MP4, JPG, otoscopes
• Orthopedics: MPR, JPG, gait studies, range of motion videos

A VNA is also critical to optimize your organization’s EHR investment while increasing physician adoption and user satisfaction. Images from the VNA are displayed within the context of the patient’s clinical information presented in the EHR, eliminating the need to switch between applications to access and view them. Consider the following VNA features:

• Interoperability: A robust VNA allows for interoperability across departments and systems, making access to information seamless and efficient for providers, all while remaining secure and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant.
• Scalability: As your healthcare enterprise evolves, imaging data needs to evolve with it. A VNA provides a framework for fluid scalability and can adapt to include more facilities as your enterprise grows. VNAs should also work at various levels of an enterprise. Small departments, for example, can benefit from the data provided by more-established facilities, while large multi-facility organizations can enjoy the simplicity of compiling images from previously untapped clinical areas.

2. Security and Compliance of Patient Data

Mature VNAs follow industry-standard IT policies and principles when handling enterprise data, so you’ll never have to worry about valuable patient data being compromised.

A VNA is designed with information management at its foundation. A centralized IT system helps to keep your data under centralized control and management instead of being run by several different departments. This can improve security, reduce operational costs, and simplify administrative tasks. It also helps the IT department run more smoothly and have better control over various departmental branches. By operating under this centralized method, you can reduce the risk of data loss, theft, and HIPAA concerns. Another benefit of a centralized IT system is your ability to consolidate hardware storage by reducing the number of data silos needed for the system to run.

Patient data is kept secure by means of the following VNA failsafe’s:

• Zero-footprint: The VNA’s zero-footprint system requires no downloads and is accessible without requiring additional steps. When users need to view images, they are not downloaded in order to display. This means that they also do not require a client-side study cache, helping you to stay HIPAA-compliant while optimizing your bandwidth.
• Secure data: Your patient information never leaves the data center, keeping it secure at all times.
• HIPAA-compliant: Audited access is an important component of HIPAA compliance. A VNA should log user activity and identify what information was accessed when and by whom. Encrypted data capture and transmission are also critically important, particularly when working with mobile data collection.
• Segregated data: A VNA should support configurable access on a need-to-know basis. For example, only those with a hand in a specific patient’s care will be able to view their data. Sensitive data has additional restrictions and controlled access, helping to keep your organization compliant and your patients safe.
• Image lifecycle management (ILM): Data retained longer than legally required can present a legal compliance risk over time. Image lifecycle management is not only critical for managing storage costs, but also an important aspect of a comprehensive enterprise data management strategy for provider organizations and an essential element of a VNA.

One unique feature of a true VNA is its ability to allow you to choose how to store and manage non- DICOM content. With a VNA, you can either store it as a native file or DICOM-wrap the data. With non-DICOM items in their native format, the legal source of the image remains untouched, allowing the data to be returned to its departmental source and/or any consumers of the data in its original format. Private metadata tags also stay intact while reducing complexities for the originating source system.

3. Streamlined Imaging Viewing and Workflows

A VNA can also help to streamline efficiency across your organization. Without the need to cross- reference data or wait for images from another department, providers have more time to focus on patient care. Because of this, intuitive design and user-friendly operations are important elements in any VNA. For example, patient images in the archive can be displayed within an EHR, saving time for providers while reducing ancillary software needs.

Some VNAs also offer mobile viewers that allow you to access your images from any HIT platform through a zero-footprint application on any device. This diagnostic viewer allows physicians to access a patient’s imaging record from any location throughout the healthcare enterprise, whether in a patient’s room or even in their own home. Through this powerful visualization solution, the physician can see the same results on their mobile device as they would at a workstation in a hospital without requiring any code to download or caching of local images. This capability is also HIPAA-compliant.

Diagnostic accreditation, which encompasses the treatment decisions made by a provider, is also an important factor to consider in enterprise viewers. Consider an enterprise viewer that has obtained FDA Class II 510(k) clearance—one of the most stringent standards from the FDA that allows providers to make diagnostic decisions using web clients and view images using iOS apps.

Some solutions may incorporate collaborative programs, such as voice and video calls. These can help increase the interoperability of your system to further encourage provider collaboration, but they must be secure and HIPAA-compliant as well. With access to cross-platform data, informatics professionals can also use this information to improve their operations and patient outcomes. Provisions should also be made to allow patients to access their own images and share with other providers.

Another convenient feature of a VNA is the ability to share clinical records across an enterprise, which helps to improve workflow efficiency for providers. Synapse® VNA uses integrating healthcare enterprise (IHE) cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) to achieve this while providing full referral tracking information to the original provider. Additional documentation can be attached to these systems, with notifications to inform the providers involved.

4. Cost Savings When Choosing a VNA

Successful VNA implementations can reduce overall costs for storage and data management by providing a centralized location for all specialty department data. Having fewer systems to manage, back up, upgrade, and support can result in significant operational savings. With that in mind, you will still want to choose a VNA that offers the most value to your business. Consider the use of DICOM and non-DICOM objects. Is increased availability and security of non-DICOM content something you need? You should also think about the options for workflow improvements. Would your facility benefit from mobile access, capture, and viewing?

VNA implementation requires a governance plan with a strong and strategic outline for the planned uses of the system and the goals you wish to achieve. Consideration should be made to review technical setup and requirements needed to integrate existing systems to a VNA.

While the initial implementation of a VNA initiative can be wide in scope, it can save money in the long run through lower operational costs and increased efficiencies. Consider the following features to further support this concept:

• Flexibility: Data migration is expensive and time-consuming. It may even be one of the highest costs associated with replacing an image management system. Using a VNA requires you to migrate data only once, eliminating the need to incur this cost in the future. VNAs also offer you more flexibility in the products you can use, instead of locking you into the imaging software vendor’s products. You can find cost savings here as well.
• Informatics: A VNA can save you money by expediting your informatics professionals’ workflow through simplified access to imaging data. Not only does this enhance productivity, but it can also inherently bring more-positive results to your facility.
• Lifecycle management: VNAs are designed with the future in mind. They require no data migration after initial setup and offer image lifecycle management (ILM) benefits. ILM is a necessary component of any data system, as it identifies data for purging and optimizes files to lower the storage costs associated with long-term data archiving. It can also apply rules to determine what data will remain on high-speed, high-cost storage tiers and what will be deleted or moved to various lower-cost storage tiers over time. VNAs with robust ILM can also apply higher levels of image compression, freeing up storage space as images age throughout their lifecycle.

Disaster recovery can also be a major cost-saving component of a strong VNA. Ensuring that your facility has the proper strongholds in place can be crucial to your business if data recovery ever becomes necessary.

Choose the Right VNA for Your Organization

In today’s healthcare environment, there is no room for substandard processes. Your patient image and data management system must be efficient and trustworthy. It should offer features that improve workflow, such as flexible file type storing, organizing, and viewing, with secure access from any device. It should also prioritize interoperability, through which clinical data can easily be stored, shared, and accessed by those who need it, with the clinical connectors that support it.

Synapse® VNA from the TeraMedica Division of Fujifilm can improve patient outcomes, increase workflow productivity, and lower costs for your organization. Please contact us for more information on how the industry’s leading image management solution can benefit your business.