Atlanta, GA —  SeeMyRadiology.com (http://www.seemyradiology.com) announces its 30th direct installation in the Kansas City and surrounding area at Children’s Mercy Hospital & Clinics, ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s top pediatric medical centers. The hospital will utilize the SeeMyRadiology.com cloud-based platform for the communication of images beyond the enterprise, including both sending and receiving images from surrounding community hospitals, imaging centers and physician practices. With SeeMyRadiology.com’s single, comprehensive web portal, sending facilities—wherever located—can upload images and enable Internet-based access in full diagnostic quality for referring physicians, consulting radiologists, patients and other authorized users anywhere. Users can also access images and reports directly from an iPhone® or iPad® app.

According to Willie Tillery, CEO of SeeMyRadiology.com, “The Kansas City area is one example where usage of SeeMyRadiology.com has grown exponentially during the past 12 months so that the platform has effectively become a Health Information Exchange for imaging in the region. As more facilities begin to take advantage of the service, SeeMyRadiology.com is quickly becoming the de facto standard for image sharing, encouraging more and more sites to join the network.”

Counting both direct subscriber hub sites and secondary spoke sites that use the free application for image sharing on-the-fly, SeeMyRadiology.com boasts more than 30 imaging facilities in the Kansas City area, among them such major facilities as The University of Kansas Hospital and Saint Luke’s Health System.

SeeMyRadiology.com provides an easy-to-manage, cost-effective alternative to image sharing using CDs and hard copy films. Remote users upload images directly from their PACS archive to the destination hospital’s SeeMyRadiology.com Internet portal. The solution requires no software download at the recipient’s site and offers an easy-to-use social media-like interface with a full range of communications options for image viewing and collaboration. It provides advanced security and permissions to ensure full HIPAA compliance for all image sharing.

“As the major children’s hospital in a large geographic area, our hospital receives more than 400 CDs a month from outside referral locations,” says Joe Racela, CIIP, PMP, Radiology Informatics Manager for Children’s Mercy. “Having the historical images from outside referral sites is critical to patient care. Transitioning from CDs to cloud based image transfer has significantly streamlined the process.”

Racela notes that originally Children’s Mercy had used SeeMyRadiology.com to share its own images with The University of Kansas Hospital, a longtime subscriber to the service. Immediately, Children’s Mercy saw a great value in the service and also became a hub site. “Today, we are connected to over 25 facilities, are very pleased with the benefits, and are growing the number of metro area and outlying medical facilities using the system.” Children’s Mercy relies on the SeeMyRadiology.com platform for a range of use cases. These include new patient referrals, trauma transfers and consults with other hospitals.

Images are immediately stored in the hospital PACS system and are available to providers. For trauma transfers, physicians can access an exam before the patient arrives onsite, plan the procedure and even prep the OR—rather than waiting for the patient to arrive with images on a CD.

For referral patients, the platform also has numerous advantages. “Many of our patients travel a long way to see our pediatric specialists. When a patient has study done at another facility, about 30 percent of the time we are not able to access the study from CD — whether because the format is incompatible, the CD is damaged or patients simply fail to bring the CD with them.

Now, we use the “request image” feature to have the remote site upload the study to the cloud. Within minutes we have the study avoiding unnecessary treatment delays and exam retakes. This is especially important to minimize radiation for pediatric patients. Providers and patients both benefit.”

Heartland Health, a community hospital in nearby St. Joseph, MO, is a spoke site using SeeMyRadiology.com to connect with eight facilities and three sub-facilities. It sends numerous cases to Children’s Mercy for trauma and specialized care. “Prior to SeeMyRadiology.com, we used to share images on CD. But in the digital age, we knew there had to be a better way,” says Dr. Joe Boyce, MD, CIO, CMIO for Heartland.

After conducting a survey of the marketplace, Dr. Boyce was convinced that the better way was SeeMyRadiology.com, and he presented the solution to Heartland Health, asking them to become a hub site to help referring hospitals streamline exam sharing. “Now, when we want images to reach remote sites, we can simply upload them to the cloud, and they’re en route,” he says, noting that the impact of this has been fewer repeat exams and enhanced clinical care.

According to Dr. Boyce, in trauma transfer cases, SeeMyRadiology.com often means that sites will not “…waste the golden hour, when every second counts in delivering timely, appropriate treatment for critical care patients. When these hospitals can begin treatment planning before the patient arrives with their images on CD, surgeries begin sooner and outcomes are improved.”

About SeeMyRadiology.com
SeeMyRadiology.com is an online community for medical image exchange that is revolutionizing how imaging facilities, physicians, and patients store, share, and access medical images and reports through a single, comprehensive web portal. By applying the advantages of cloud computing, SeeMyRadiology.com allows for easier and more efficient collaboration and communication between health care facilities, caregivers and patients. Members of the SeeMyRadiology.com community have immediate access to full diagnostic quality images via the Internet in a HIPAA-compliant and secure environment, dramatically improving the speed, mobility, efficiency and quality of care while reducing the cost of medical image exchange. SeeMyRadiology.com is in use by leading institutions including Kaiser Permanente, Ohio State University Medical Center, Orlando Health, University of Kansas Hospital and University of Utah Health Care among others. Learn more at www.seemyradiology.com

Source:  www.accelarad.com