lifeIMAGE Joins Healtheway’s Carequality Initiative

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Orlando, Fla. (PRWEB) February 24, 2014

To empower patients and to afford them secure, online, and sharable access to their medical imaging records, lifeIMAGE announced today that it has pledged support for Carequality, a new initiative from Healtheway that aims to facilitate interoperability between existing and emerging health information exchange (HIE) networks.

The Carequality initiative will be dedicated to accelerating progress in health data exchange among multi-platform networks, healthcare providers, electronic health record (EHR) and HIE vendors. It is an open, transparent and inclusive industry-driven effort to facilitate industry consensus and develop and maintain a standards-based interoperability framework that enables exchange between and among networks.

lifeIMAGE is the nation’s most utilized network for sharing medical images. To date, its service has been used to exchange more than 800 million images. Healthcare providers utilize lifeIMAGE’s intuitive workflow to manage exams from patient CDs, electronically receive imaging results from any outside source, integrate imaging information with their local EHR, and share exams with physicians and patients. lifeIMAGE has also partnered with the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in the Image Share project, an initiative funded by the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, through which several thousand patients have gained online access to and shared imaging results with their selected physicians.

Carequality intends to address a number of interoperability challenges, and lifeIMAGE looks forward to bringing its perspective on solving image exchange to the initiative. To that end, lifeIMAGE has begun early work on image exchange with Epic, a Healtheway and Carequality founding member, to develop integration of their respective systems. As one example of multiple use cases for image sharing through interoperability of lifeIMAGE and MyChart, Epic’s patient portal, patients will be able to share results of prior imaging exams directly with their care providers’ EHR.

“The RSNA is delighted to see its efforts to establish standards-based image exchange through the RSNA Image Share project attain vendor adoption as lifeIMAGE works to provide patients and providers easy but secure access to images through this technology,” said Dr. David Mendelson, the principal investigator for the RSNA Image Share project, and the Director of Radiology Information Systems at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, N.Y. “Mount Sinai will participate in a pilot program with both vendors later this year to provide these solutions to our community and help foster national interoperability solutions.”

“Interoperability and standards are significant contributors to good medicine. The end goal is to increase the quality of care with better access while avoiding duplication and waste that cost the system so much. We’ll keep doing our part to move the cause forward and the continued momentum is very encouraging,” said Hamid Tabatabaie, CEO and co-founder of lifeIMAGE. “When you can see providers on their EHR screens accessing images that, moments before, were uploaded by patients from home, or the results that came from a distant provider who imaged the patient in the first place, you know you are close to the goal and it energizes us to keep pushing forward.”

lifeIMAGE is exhibiting at the annual meeting of the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) today, Monday February 24, through Wednesday, February 26, in Orlando, Fla. Attendees are encouraged to visit its booth, number 2009, to learn more.

About lifeIMAGE
lifeIMAGE provides a broad set of solutions for universal e-sharing of diagnostic imaging information. These products securely connect hospitals, radiology groups and physicians to their patients everywhere and are currently deployed at many of the nation’s leading healthcare institutions and academic medical centers. The goal of the lifeIMAGE, recently named the top image exchange vendor by KLAS Research*, is to help avoid duplicate exams and eliminate unnecessary patient exposure to excessive radiation.

*“2013 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services,” January 2014. © 2014 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.klasresearch.com

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