RSNA 2011 – Meaningful Use and Cloud Took a Back Burner to ‘Imaging’
by Dave Wilson on Dec 5, 2011
Renee Stacey, Senior Solutions Marketing Manager of Health and Life Sciences at HDS, accompanied me to RSNA 2011 last week. It was a great show, and Renee asked if she could contribute a recap for the blog. Take it away, Renee…
Earlier this year, leaders in the radiology space were pushing the industry to be better engaged with the Meaningful Use (MU) incentive program. MUs is a government incentive program that financially rewards healthcare professionals when they adopt certified EHR technology and use it to achieve specified objectives. Initially, radiologists were hesitant to participate, which raised fear that adoption delays could impact the ability to meet new clinical and technology demands. For an industry that has typically led the pack on clinical innovation, there seemed to be real risk of radiology being left behind.
Since that time, radiology’s participation in the MU program has been clarified, however radiology groups are still slower than expected in adopting these IT innovations – innovations that are essential both for improving patient interactions and for their promised financial reward. KLAS recently teamed up with the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) to conduct a survey on this very topic. Among the results were two very interesting outcomes, the first showed that 60% of those surveyed either have a plan or are considering qualifying for the MU incentives…. and more interesting, only 6% considered themselves educated on the MU incentive program. To me, that says there is a deep disconnect between the needs of the radiology consumer and how the technology players in this market are delivering their message.
I bring this up because, after following this story and having just returned from RSNA, I would have expected to see a plethora of MU messaging – and while RSNA provided a number of professional sessions on the topic – the MU message did not seem to make it to the show floor. Does it mean that IT health vendors are not coming to the table with Meaningful Use Certified solutions? Probably not. I think it means that perhaps, there was a miscalculation in what vendors believed the radiology community wanted or needed to hear. When only 6% of those surveyed have a comfortable understanding of MU opportunities, it means 94% need more information to make better educated decisions about their MU plans.
The same must be said for Cloud, which was surprising when private and public cloud was the message dujour this time last year. I expected attendees of RSNA11 to be able to see and hear a more mature and better defined cloud message with a lot of industry examples and success stories. Instead, with the exception of a very small handful, the big message appeared to be imaging. Relevant? Yes. Forward thinking? I am not so sure.
And with 40,000+ radiology professionals in attendance, imaging is a given. I would have expected RSNA to be THE place to learn more about cloud and MU offerings – because it is clear that the radiology market is working hard to learn more about it.
What were your thoughts on how RSNA promoted innovation in radiology?
