With over 15k connected facilities and a dedicated outreach team building new connections every day, it’s no wonder Nuance PowerShare Image Sharing has received the #1 Best in KLAS 2024 award for image exchange – marking our second consecutive win! Read on to see the many creative ways customers are partnering with us to build connections and achieve incredible outcomes.
Medical imaging is a critical component of modern healthcare. Radiologists, physicians, and other healthcare professionals rely on imaging data to diagnose and treat various diseases and conditions. With the increasing volume of medical imaging data being generated every day, the need for a comprehensive health record inclusive of patient imaging has never been greater.
Image-enabling the healthcare ecosystem drives better information awareness, availability, and access. With the largest and fastest growing network in the industry, PowerShare harnesses the latest cloud technology to go beyond image sharing and exchange. In fact, this vast network connects a wide range of imaging stakeholders from medtech to pharma, payers, AI developers, and more, empowering them to access AI and consume AI insights derived from imaging data. Organizations benefit from a single point of access to AI services through the Nuance Precision Imaging Network (PIN)—delivering AI directly into workflows across the healthcare ecosystem.
Powered by Microsoft Azure, PowerShare handles large volumes of medical imaging data quickly and efficiently at the point of care and provides a secure and scalable infrastructure to healthcare organizations of all sizes. I’d like to share the many ways these facilities are using this incredible solution and our ever-growing network to engage patients, optimize workflows, and deliver better healthcare outcomes.
1. Seamless Epic integration saves clinicians time and provides a more complete patient record
University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) is one of North America’s most renowned medical centers. The center’s imaging volumes exceed 1.2 million studies every year—and previously, most imaging was shared using physical CDs, and wasn’t accessible in the center’s EHR. URMC wanted to find a faster, more convenient way to allow providers to share patient images and view them alongside patients’ associated clinical data.
URMC integrated PowerShare with its Epic EHR. Now, URMC’s providers are connected to an expanding network of more than 300 hospitals, large health systems, medical vendors, and research facilities. During the first three months using PowerShare, URMC clinicians uploaded more than 147,000 studies and shared 88,000 of them. Since then, URMC has connected more than 2,000 providers across its network.
Read the case study to see how URMC is enabling clinicians to share and access all their patients’ relevant imaging and clinical data in one place with deep Epic EHR integration.
2. Boosting information awareness, availability, and access in Indiana
CareWeb is an application developed by the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) that gives 50,000+ providers simple access to information on the 18+ million patients they serve. CareWeb uses PowerShare to let clinicians access patient studies with a single click, no matter which participating facility performed the scan. It’s a frictionless, self-service experience, which enhances information awareness, availability, and access. Clinicians can now:
- See their patients’ prior studies, wherever they took place
- Access these studies without having to put in a request
- View imaging immediately, in their own environment, without switching systems
Read the case study on how IHIE has integrated PowerShare for efficient retrieval of imaging studies and report information.
3. Connecting ED clinicians with their patients’ prior imaging
In Nebraska, PowerShare is also boosting clinician image awareness. In addition to self-serve access to imaging, CyncHealth is taking it one step further. CyncHealth, the statewide Health Information Exchange, is harnessing PowerShare to notify ED clinicians when prior imaging studies and reports exist for their patients.
Through the growing PowerShare network, clinicians and patients across Nebraska, and in participating facilities in Iowa, will have seamless, secure, and timely access to studies and clinical data at the point of care. And that means expedited clinical decisions, greater continuity of care, and fewer redundant exams.
4. Giving women greater control of their breast health
HerScan has scanned more than 70,000 women in the last 10 years at mobile breast ultrasound sites across 17 states. The company is using PowerShare to minimize the anxious wait between having a scan and getting results.
Imaging from HerScan’s mobile sites is shared directly with radiologists across the country, helping the company share reports with patients in as little as a day. The company has also created a customer portal where women can easily access their imaging and reports and share them with their doctors. Read our guest post from Mary Jo Henderson, CEO and Managing Member of HerScan, to learn the company’s inspiring story.
5. Increasing patient engagement with easy and secure access to imaging
Similarly, other healthcare providers are following suit, empowering patients with simplified access to their imaging. Bronson Healthcare, Atlantic Medical Imaging, and countless others are promoting patient account access to PowerShare directly from their websites, giving patients the ability to view and share their imaging and upload studies from outside facilities.
6. Decreasing time to value by making connecting easy
With BAAs already in place and unmatched interoperability, PowerShare makes connecting with outside facilities easy and secure across all specialties and organization types.
“PowerShare is at the core of our practice and we couldn’t deliver optimal care without it. We treat our patients like family and battling cancer requires fast and reliable medical image and information exchange between multidisciplinary teams at multiple facilities. Before I met the Nuance team, most of the sites I tried to connect with were already on PowerShare, so it was clear we needed to make the switch,” says Dr. Chivonne Harrigal, Personalized Imaging Consultants. “Within a fraction of the time, the Nuance team helped us build an empire of connected sites, giving me and my patients peace of mind. Now, instead of calling up different facilities one by one, my team and I can focus on what matters most—detecting and diagnosing cancer and communicating those critical results with patients and their care teams.”
Nuance’s dedicated partnership and PowerShare’s simplicity and reliability remove workflow complexity and give added confidence to Dr. Harrigal, her patients, and a multitude of other clinicians and facilities. Read the case study.
7. Deep integration and automation drive efficiency and increases physician satisfaction
For Mark Tucker, Senior Epic/Apps System Analyst at UMass Memorial Hospital, PowerShare’s deep integration and automated workflow was critical to saving precious time and increasing physician satisfaction. “Not only are we accelerating care delivery with electronic image sharing, but PowerShare’s deep Epic integration and ability to auto-generate orders have been tremendous,” says Tucker. “In our first 11 months with the solution, we’ve auto-generated over 18,000 orders, saving our providers over 900 hours.” Read our case study to learn how UMass Memorial is driving efficiency and adoption with PowerShare.
8. Responding to crisis situations with speed and agility
In March 2020, New York City’s iconic Javits Center was transformed into a field hospital, ready to treat a surge of patients with COVID-19. Northwell Health, a PowerShare customer and one of the many organizations involved in the effort, wanted to ensure its radiologists could support the facility remotely—for their own safety, and for the safety of their patients. The Nuance team worked closely with Northwell and set up real-time, remote access in a single afternoon.
PowerShare’s flexibility, and the Nuance team’s committed partnership and agility, lead to rapid clinician adoption with minimal training. The speed at which PowerShare delivers value to providers and their patients has become the gold standard of care delivery across all specialties.
9. Immediate image sharing accelerates care, saving lives in the operating room and beyond
No matter the specialty, multidisciplinary teams within and outside a facility need fast and efficient ways to communicate effectively and coordinate the best possible care.
If you suffer a thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm (TAAA), every second counts. So, when the aortic team at Tampa General Hospital Transfer Center was asked to determine if they could treat a patient’s TAAA, they asked for the CT scan—completed by an outside facility—to be shared via PowerShare. With immediate access to the imaging, the aortic team not only confirmed they could treat the patient, but also began preparing for the operation. PowerShare played a critical role in supporting the well-executed response plan. As a result, this patient’s door-to-CVOR (cardiovascular operating room) time was just 10 minutes.
10. Powering today and the future while delivering on ROI
To round out our celebration, we conclude with FirstHealth of the Carolinas. Leveraging the PowerShare infrastructure and its extensive network, FirstHealth is integrating partner AI solutions through the Nuance Precision Imaging Network to add clinical value with actionable insights. They deployed Imbio’s LDAi which offers fully automated detection, visualization and quantification of certain characteristics that may indicate emphysema and can be used with low-dose CT scans as part of lung cancer screening. This platform is advancing the way lung patients are diagnosed, treated, and managed. Read more about how FirstHealth is harnessing AI to improve the health of the communities they serve.
