BWHand EMC Corporation are blending world-renowned medical care with leading information storage technology to establish the EMC Data Center for Information Imaging within the BWH Center of Excellence for Evidence-Based Imaging. Together, EMC and BWH will develop innovative practices for a fully digital health care imaging environment. The new center will provide for BWH scientists to conduct cutting-edge research through the use of state-of-the-art information technology, and radiographic and cardiographic tools.

“Discussions between BWH and EMC regarding electronic data storage solutions for information-intensive applications, like diagnostic imaging, led to a dialogue about the needs for practitioners in a modern academic medical center to access electronic data from a variety of archives and sources at the time of clinical decision making. We believe EMC had technologies that could help us address these issues,” said Steven Seltzer, MD, chair, BWH Radiology Department.

The Center will provide BWH with electronic capabilities to improve the efficiency of storage, access and management of patient health records. It will allow BWH to leverage clinical knowledge whenever and wherever it is needed. According to its director Ramin Khorasani, MD, the Center’s efforts will focus on the integration of disparate information system databases to develop and deliver knowledge in order for clinicians to make better decisions regarding the type of imaging used.

“Specifically, we expect to use EMC’s technology to better harvest information from the Longitudinal Medical Record (LMR), the Radiology Information System (RIS), the Radiology Image Archive (PACS) and the Hospital Information System to support the referring physician’s decision,” added Seltzer.

EMC will use the Center to develop best practices in medical imaging and better understand requirements to develop future technologies.

The efforts of this highly advanced collaboration should come to fruition in 12 to 18 months.