Telstra, Mach7 partner to build complete view of patient

Imagine a beautiful blue sky Saturday in your local township. Parents cheer on a fast-paced and physical youth lacrosse tournament. Bumps and bruises are part of the game, but today, 14-year-old Connor sustains an uncommon injury – an injury that will require significant care coordination on and off the field.

Conner has a yet undetected congenital kidney defect that reveals itself when a high velocity lacrosse ball hits his lower back. Connor falls to the ground writhing in pain – it becomes apparent to the coaches that this is no ordinary injury.

Connor is rushed to the local community hospital where his medical history is taken and he is examined. Tests including a CT scan are ordered. Connor and his mother wait for answers. It’s Saturday, making it more challenging for the clinical team to locate a reading radiologist with the necessary expertise to review the complex case. Delays mount as teams struggle to get Connor’s images into the right hands.

The images reveal that the focused impact of the ball caused severe damage to Connor’s kidney and ureter. The local hospital is not equipped to handle the necessary surgery. Connor’s CT scan images are copied to a CD and Connor, his mother and the CD are transported to the closest trauma centre, 50 miles away.

Treatment delays mount: When Connor arrives at the trauma center, doctors are unable to access the diagnostic images stored on the CD that are vital to Connor’s timely treatment. Whether this failure is due to human error or system incompatibility, it doesn’t matter, time is critical. Connor must have the CT scan performed again – adding time and expense that should have been completely avoidable.

Despite the missing images and additional time added to his treatment plan, Connor’s story ends well. His emergency surgery is a success and he is even able to join his classmates for his 8th grade graduation ceremony just a week later.

Solving a common healthcare problem: Connor’s story is true, and is all too common. Healthcare teams struggle to manage and share patient records across facilities, regions and sadly, even across departments in the same facility. Getting the correct records to the correct clinical and diagnostic experts at the right time challenges nearly every healthcare organization world-wide. It is estimated that one in five hospital admissions in the US, one in six hospital admissions in Australia and one in 12 hospital admissions in Canada requires duplicate diagnostic tests because health professionals have no access to previous test results. Duplicate exams are costly, time consuming, and can expose patients to unnecessary radiation and treatment delays.

Partnering to bring the patient into focus across clinical environments: In Australia, Telstra Health, a division of Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications and information services company, is tackling the problem of image accessibility for reading radiologists, clinicians and patients. Telstra Health expanded their network services offering to support their mission of delivering connected healthcare for everyone. The new solution is changing the way radiology and imaging is delivered across Australia – increasing access and convenience for both patients and providers.

Deploying a hybrid architecture: The solution utilizes a hybrid architecture which delivers the benefits of both a cloud-based and on-site solution. The service, managed and hosted by Telstra, relieves imaging facilities from setting up private clouds and elaborate on-site hardware and software infrastructures. Costs are reduced and infrastructure upgrades are avoided. Imaging procedures are transmitted and shared using Telstra connectivity and the power of Mach7 Enterprise Imaging Platform.

This powerful Platform, consisting of Mach7’s Communication Workflow Engine and Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) with built in XDS registry and repository, provides standards-based archiving and communication, eliminating the need to maintain disparate, department-specific silos of patient information.

In addition to DICOM files, the VNA supports all other file types, including JPEG, PDF, video and more. Using standards, imaging data is normalized, consolidated and accessible regardless of location or system used to capture the data.

Unlocking this data from proprietary storage architecture creates the foundations for a clinical ecosystem with plug-and-play accessibility for best-of-breed clinical applications.

Capital Radiology, a leading diagnostic imaging provider in Australia, has already deployed the solution to nearly all of their 72 clinics with great success. Chris Germon, CIO of Capital Radiology, said that the solution has changed the way radiology is delivered.

“Telstra’s enterprise imaging service provides Capital Radiology with a flexible and robust solution to better manage our large amount of imaging data. Our business workflow requirements change regularly but using this platform we can adjust our workflow rules within seconds and deliver images to clinicians promptly.”

Eric Rice, CTO of Mach7 added, “Mach7’s vendor neutral architecture and Telstra’s mission-critical network is bridging traditional barriers. Telstra is able to leverage the power of the Mach7 platform to realize benefits of improved efficiency, reduced costs and better patient care across Australia.”

Reuven Soraya is Sr. VP, International Sales, at Mach7 Technologies.