In February 2013, the ACR® Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute (HPI) released a brief¹ proposing a classification system for repeat medical-imaging studies. Richard Duszak, MD, CEO of HPI, says, “We wanted to propose a way to study the incidence, utilization, and appropriateness of repeat imaging for research and policy purposes. While that was our primary audience, and they would be researching this retrospectively, there is a lot of opportunity to do this in a prospective, real-time fashion for quality-improvement purposes.”

Mercy San Juan Medical Center is a 370-bed acute-care hospital in Carmichael, California, that is part of the not-for-profit Dignity Health System. It has experienced significant growth since it opened its doors in 1967—particularly following the 2009 introduction of a new patient tower that added 110 beds.

The Argonauts (and Odysseus, after them) had to sail past rocky islands housing the enchanting Sirens. Their wonderful songs made sailors hurl themselves overboard and swim toward them, even as they died upon the jagged rocks. After my fifth birthday, however, I accepted that plugging my ears never makes bad news go away for long.

The data-intensive nature of radiology has long kept the specialty on the cutting edge of IT. That’s why cloud computing is a relatively old concept among imaging-informatics veterans.

The deftness of data movement between sites creates a deception that it’s easy; it’s not. Leaving aside technical problems with integration, servers, and storage, the more central problem might be this: Who pays the bill to set image exchange in motion?

Since opening on February 17, 1910, the 375-bed Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHC), in Aurora has tried to be a leader in providing the best health-care outcomes for children.

Many radiology administrators remember purchasing their first or second PACS: It was probably no small financial commitment, and justifying the expense might have been a painful process.

When Duke University Health System (DUHS) in Durham, North Carolina, goes live with its full-blown Epic electronic health record (EHR) implementation in June 2013