A comprehensive cardiovascular information technology (CVIT) solution connects healthcare professionals with every image, video, and scan. Imagine the power of weaving structured and unstructured data together for a deeper understanding of a patient's journey. This vision starts with CVIT and ends with more precise, connected, personalized care.
Constrained resources and siloed data obscure that vision for many cardiovascular care teams. As the demand for cardiology services increases, valuable staffing resources are becoming more limited. The Association of American Medical Colleges predicted a shortage of nearly 120,000 cardiologists by 2030[i].
In addition, cardiology departments often have a disparate mix of imaging data, systems, tools, and other proprietary information, complicating workflows and increasing the cognitive burden on an already overworked cardiology team.
As a set of strategies, initiatives, and workflows designed to help capture, index, manage, store, distribute, and view all clinical and non-clinical cardiology data and multimedia across the hospital, CVIT provides the opportunity for connected care that eases the burden on healthcare providers. Smooth data flow and streamlined workflows minimize friction in day-to-day operations. Quick and complete access to accurate patient data helps save clinicians time and improves care delivery.
As organizations strive to provide more connected care, many take a broader perspective when evaluating CVIT. Today, many organizations require cardiology solutions that align with their enterprise imaging strategy[ii]. In that context, CVIT must not only meet the needs of the cardiology team but also help consolidate cardiology solutions into the enterprise imaging system.
CVIT that bridges the gaps between cardiology service lines and healthcare information systems is comprised of four key components to provide a single point of access to patient data, waveforms, and images with powerful end-to-end management, analysis, and workflow tools. Understanding the parts that comprise a high-functioning CVIT can help organizations select a solution that meets the diverse needs of the cardiology team while also fitting into the enterprise imaging strategy.
The foundation: Vendor neutral archive (VNA)
CVIT is built upon a central repository that houses and integrates vast amounts of cardiology data from any number of modalities across departments and locations, enabling frictionless data flow with a single point of entry and organization-wide access. The VNA consolidates and manages the huge volume of unstructured patient data created and distributed throughout a patient’s care journey—helping to close the EHR data gap.
As the foundation of the CVIT, the VNA:
- Helps overcome delayed and incomplete image availability
- Provides easy interaction with multiple systems
- Supports cloud deployments for difficult remote access
- Interacts with Electronic Health Records
- Enables the creation of powerful longitudinal healthcare records
AI capabilities are also a consideration. By integrating AI algorithms directly into the VNA, healthcare organizations can analyze these large amounts of data efficiently and drive actionable, real-time insights. AI-driven insights can help put together the pieces of a complicated diagnostic puzzle. In addition, combining AI capabilities with the interoperability of the VNA can help enhance clinical workflows and deliver more personalized care to cardiovascular patients.
Providing easy access to images and data
Essential to CVIT is a single remote universal clinical viewer where the cardiologists and other referring physicians can easily view images and data to help them make well-informed clinical decisions. The viewer provides single-point access to patient data from devices across the organization, requiring only an internet connection.
As a powerful resource for decision support, image analysis, workflow automation, and department analytics, a remote universal clinical viewer:
- Supports the enterprise imaging goal of consolidation by reducing the need for dedicated workstations
- Improves clinical workflows with a central workspace that facilitates organizing, prioritizing, and managing exams
- Makes a wide range of images and clinical information available through seamless connections to third-party systems and information sources
- Provides advanced efficiency tools to help clinicians find, view, and use data for more informed interpretations
- Enables clinicians to quickly find, review, and analyze radiological images from multiple modalities in one convenient application, including 2D, 3D, 4D, and other advanced image formats
Reporting capabilities that balance ease of use and sophisticated analysis
A complete Cardiovascular IT solution should include reporting options that allow for the capture of standardized information while accommodating individual physician preferences. That balance allows healthcare providers to quickly capture data and generate detailed cardiovascular reports with just a few clicks.
The balance of simple and complex can provide the ideal mix of reporting capabilities. Nearly every organization needs simplified structured reporting, enabling compliant documentation and reduced reporting time. At the same time, they also need sophisticated tools that allow for deep clinical analysis of data from multiple information systems and cardio service lines. While finding this balance can be tricky, it’s essential – practitioner collaboration, efficient workflows, and optimized patient care rely heavily on wide-ranging reporting capabilities that deliver both ease of use and complex data analysis capabilities.
Optimizing workflows
CVIT should provide a comprehensive set of tools for all department data and information management. With a goal of allowing clinicians to focus on patients, not technology, the CVIT workflow tools should track and manage inventory, create structured clinical reports, and run clinical and administrative queries. Clinicians benefit from boosted efficiency and time savings through task reduction while patient throughput is enhanced.
Workflows to consider include:
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- Intelligent reporting that transforms the physician reporting experience with side-by-side reporting and quick reports that significantly reduce clicks
- Seamless ECG management
- User worklist prioritization within noninvasive modules to help prioritize physician worklists by identifying STAT, urgent and routine studies
- Reporting contradictions that alert user to conflicting statements in the clinical report
- Inventory management with a complete set of tools to track cardiology inventories, reduce waste, and automate billing
- Charge capture with the capability to assign procedure codes for each patient encounter while reporting on the procedure outcome at the point of care
- Scheduling module with both in-app and web capabilities
- Registry submission to help remain aligned with the requirements of various registries and help ensure data consistency between monitoring devices, reporting solutions, and registry data
Moving toward connected care
Cardiovascular IT plays a pivotal role in cardiology diagnostics and treatment, and cardio imaging is one of the most promising areas of innovation. It’s also one of the most challenging. Every cardiovascular department relies on a mix of devices, systems, and tools to care for their patients. To optimize efficiencies and maximize effectiveness, they need a way to make sure these pieces work together across complex cardiovascular care pathways.
That is the power of a comprehensive CVIT solution. The ability to share and leverage structured and unstructured data across departments empowers clinicians and care teams to take the most impactful action based on more timely, accurate information. With the right components in place, CVIT can centralize data and streamline workflows, moving cardiology teams closer to the promise of precise, connected, personalized care.
[i] https://www.beckersasc.com/cardiology/the-cardiologist-shortage-by-the-numbers.html
[ii] https://klasresearch.com/report/cardiology-2021-opportunity-for-market-disruption-a-decision-insights-report/1495
