Partners for Better Care: Connecting imaging information for more coordinated care

For many patients, care may involve several institutions and specialists over time. An imaging scan taken at one institution may need to be reviewed months or years later at another. When medical information is stored in separate systems, bringing together a complete picture of a patient’s health condition can be challenging.

At NUHS, the rollout of a unified picture archiving and communication system (PACS), together with the electronic medical record (EMR) system, is helping to overcome some of these barriers.

When a patient undergoes an imaging examination, such as an ultrasound, CT or MRI scan, the images are stored in a digital system known as PACS.

Radiologists review these images in the system alongside the patient’s medical history and earlier scans to help understand their condition. Consider a patient diagnosed at one hospital, referred to another for treatment and later returning for surgery. At each stage, clinicians may need to review earlier scans to understand how the patient’s condition has changed. When those images are stored in separate PACS systems, finding and comparing them can be more difficult.

With the rollout of a unified PACS together with the EMR system, imaging and patient medical records are now connected across NUHS institutions, reducing the effort involved in locating information across different systems.

As patients move between hospitals and specialists, access to relevant information can help different care teams see a more complete picture of their health and make informed decisions about the next steps in care.

Introducing a unified PACS and EMR system requires clinicians, radiographers, IT teams, hospital leaders and technology partners to work together, from workflow design and implementation to user training.

Philips was among the technology partners involved in the initiative, working alongside healthcare teams at NUHS.