GE helps Canadian facility go digital

GE Healthcare has implemented its Digital Imaging Repository (DI-r) to connect hospitals and medical centers throughout Southwestern Ontario (SWO) Canada.

By providing clinicians a longitudinal patient view through GE's Centricity OneView, the project aligns with the Canada Health Infoway (CHI) and eHealth Ontario initiatives to create a pan-Province and, eventually, pan-Canadian EHR.

"This will provide the infrastructure to allow physicians to review and consult from any location, regardless of PACS vendor or site where that patient data originated. GE Healthcare provided the knowledge and expertise that allowed us to implement the DI-r with Centricity OneView as the anchor for a cohesive, longitudinal view of the patient jacket," said Babette MacRae, project director of SWO.

GE said a number of vendors and solutions are involved, including five PACS vendors, three RIS vendors and five dictation vendors. Each of the areas feed images and information into the DI-r backed by GE. By combining GE's Centricity Enterprise Archive along with Centricity OneView, radiologists can access images and report on studies that originated in other facilities. Patients in the region will also benefit from a reduction in unnecessary transfers, especially trauma patients.

The SWO project was the first of four Ontario DI-r projects awarded to GE. Currently, 12 medical facilities with a combined 160,000 exams per year are archiving into the DI-r and sharing images and another 16 sites with an annual volume of 935,000 exams are archiving into the DI-r. Once the project is complete and all hubs are online, the DI-r will span four Local Healthcare Integrated Networks (LHINs) and share nearly 3.2 million imaging exams each year.

Centricity Enterprise Archive delivers a DICOM archive solution for fast and efficient storage and retrieval of medical images. GE said that Centricity OneView is a web-based clinical information and workflow management engine that bridges the gap between disparate radiology systems, providing access to all clinical data regardless of the originating source of that data.