Building on their Google Cloud partnership, Life Image and Dicom Systems are collaborating once more to streamline access to clinical content within and across provider organizations and healthcare systems.

Combining the intra- and inter-system interoperability of Dicom Systems’ Enterprise Imaging Unifier Platform with Life Image’s global data-sharing network, the two plan to enhance interoperability in ways that will improve care, reduce costs and instill greater workflow efficiency among organizations.

"The entire healthcare industry has been crying out to shift away from proprietary systems that trap medical data in silos toward standards-based technology that allows access to medical data," Matthew A. Michela, president and CEO of Life Image, told HCB News. "As partners with Google Cloud, we are working collaboratively to solve big challenges and develop novel discoveries, and can also bring even greater interoperability and value to healthcare organizations that are looking to leverage the ability to share data at scale to accelerate their own innovation."
Dicom System’s Enterprise Imaging Unifier Platform is designed to ensure data compatibility is present among existing information systems, such as RIS, HIS and PACS. Life Image’s global data-sharing network, meanwhile, allows providers, organizations and networks to exchange medical images, diagnostic reports and other forms of clinical data, as part of its Interoperability Suite, which connects 1,500 U.S. facilities, 8,000 affiliated sites, 150,000 U.S. providers, and 58,000 global clinics with patients, life sciences, medical device companies and telehealth enterprises.

The enhancement of interoperability offered by these two platforms is expected to fill longstanding gaps within an enterprise's clinical workflow; combine medical information with other data and make it accessible to external third-party networks; and accelerate the transportation and accurate coordination of data across multiple EHRs, PACS and hospitals, as well as among patients and their physicians.

Under the agreement, Unifier will be offered as part of the suite, expanding the interoperability available to consumers and fulfilling industry demands for a comprehensive network in which all clinical data can be accessed, shared and stored throughout a patient’s care process.

"Medical image sharing and workflow automation need to become as easy as placing a cellphone call from one telecom provider to another. Our goal is to have a meaningful impact on the endemic – and chronic – problem of medical records fragmentation, and to help organizations better automate workflows," Florent Saint-Clair, executive vice president of Dicom Systems, told HCB News. "Our collaboration with Life Image is poised to reduce technical barriers, encourage other imaging vendors to act like telecom providers, and join us in an industry coalition that will facilitate smooth medical record exchanges."

The two will be available to discuss their partnership in more detail this month at the annual RSNA conference in Chicago.

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