Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/63214
experienced people with the tools and information they need to make informed and effective decisions." This same kind of alignment of knowl- edge, skills and experience, recently resulted in a new way to make medical imaging studies available to caregivers inside Cleveland Clinic facilities, and now, as part of the MyPractice Community electronic medical record (EMR) system, to physicians in private practice. At its heart, the success of this nearly three-year project is composed of two related parts. "Part one," Dr. Borkowski explains, "is a next generation PACS (picture archiving and communication system) that is powerful enough to store and catalogue the enormous amount of digital information associated with the more than two million multiple modality imag- ing exams conducted at Cleveland Clinic each year, and is also "smart" enough to register every one of those images as they are taken over time, and associate them to specific patient identifiers so that they can be made available through our MyPractice system when and where they are needed." "Part two," adds Louis Lannum, direc- tor of Enterprise Imaging in Cleveland Clinic's Information Technology Division, "is how we configured the technology that accesses the clinical imaging archive inside our recently completed state-of- the-art data center. Instead of moving all of the data associated with an image to the hard drive inside a clinician's computer, we created a system of secure, dedicated servers that render the images they receive so that all the clinician's workstation has to do is 'paint' the screen. This saves time, and bandwidth." "And because the image archive's database function is integrated with the MyPractice EMR," adds C. Martin Harris, MD, Cleveland Clinic's Chief Information Officer, and executive director of the eCleveland Clinic secure online services program, "a clinician simply clicks on the Get Image button to make the selected images appear directly in context with the rest of the patient's record." While the collaborative work that was required to connect the vast amount of data generated by Cleveland Clinic's vari- ous imaging resources to an "intelligent" PACS and an integrated electronic medi- cal record system was quite complex, as Dr. Borkowski concludes, one anticipated result is notable for its simplicity: the human connection between a patient and their physician. "I remember," he says, "my father, who was an internist, telling me how he would often draw a picture as he was explaining a situation to a patient. People are visual, and a picture could sometimes help them achieve the kind of understanding that takes away some of the fear that comes with uncertainty. Hopefully, the pictures that this new computerized functionality we've developed will help physicians draw for their patients will be even more effective in achieving the kind of shared understanding that can make the physician/patient relationship a real partnership that has the patient's health and wellbeing as its center and focus." For more informat ion about the MyPract ice Communit y elect ronic medical record system for physicians in private practice, which features the image viewing functionality discussed above, please call 216.738.4617, or visit clevelandclinic.org/mpc. s MyPractice Community is powered by EPIC Systems, an ONC-ATCB-certified solution. (ONC-ATCB: Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology-Authorized Testing and Certification Body.) " clinician's computer, we created a system of secure, dedicated servers that render the images they receive so that all the clinician's workstation has to do is "paint" the screen. This saves time, and bandwidth. — Louis Lannum, Director of Enterprise Imaging, Cleveland Clinic Division of Information Technology MAY-JUNE 2012 s MDNEWS.COM s MD NEWS Cleveland-Akron-Canton | 37 " Instead of moving all of the data associated with an image to the hard drive inside a PHOTOS COURTESY OF CLEVELAND CLINIC