The discussion of so called Enterprise Imaging is a hot topic. So I was very excited to read about the newly announced joint workgroup between HIMSS and SIIM. I believe it holds a lot of promise.

In my experience, there is no lack of technical solutions for capturing, managing, discovering, accessing and viewing enterprise images and related information. The challenge is discovering and sharing the knowledge on best practices of how to put it all together and how to operate the systems that manage this information.

Like diagnostic imaging exams, enterprise images are part of the patient’s medical record, so understanding how they should best be incorporated into the EMR is very important. And this is not just a technical discussion, there are lots of issues around policies and governance of the data that organizations—not their vendors—have to get a handle on.

This is why this workgroup is so important. HIMSS knows all about EMR solutions, and SIIM knows imaging informatics. A perfect marriage.