New model aims to help gauge process in enterprise imaging

Healthcare organizations’ enterprise imaging efforts now can be benchmarked against a newly developed eight-stage model that measures progress toward a digitized imaging IT environment.

Called the Digital Imaging Adoption Model (DIAM), it’s intended to help healthcare organizations take a stepwise approach to assess and support multiple imaging services across their enterprises. Coordination of imaging services through IT has been complicated by development of imaging technology and consolidation among healthcare organizations in the industry.

The eight-stage approach was announced at the HIMSS19 annual conference in Orlando on Wednesday. It was developed through the joint efforts of HIMSS Analytics, the Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM), the European Society of Radiology and the European Society of Medical Imaging Informatics.

The DIAM’s stages provides guidance for imaging and IT experts to assess and benchmark the use of information and technology in medical imaging to optimize internal workflows, increase patient safety and improve quality of care. The organizations that developed it say the model includes the key elements for implementing, deploying and enabling enterprise imaging capabilities.

Improving performance across an enterprise is important because it enables healthcare providers to consistently capture, index, manage, store, distribute, view, exchange, analyze and make full use of all clinical imaging and multimedia content to enhance how the electronic medical record environment supports the clinician’s decision-making process.



SIIM leaders “are excited to see the efforts of our joint community with HIMSS Analytics produce a global model for measuring adoption of enterprise imaging,” says James Whitfill, MD, chief transformation officer of HonorHealth and chair of SIIM. “The DIAM will be a critical tool to advance the field of enterprise imaging.”

“Medical imaging is not only a very important medical discipline, it is also one of the most innovative fields from a health informatics perspective. We are very excited to expand the DIAM to provide enterprise imaging as a critical component of our HIMSS Analytics Maturity Models portfolio,” adds John Daniels, global vice president of HIMSS Analytics.”

HIMSS Analytics also has developed adoption models for electronic medical records in both the inpatient and outpatient settings; for continuity of care; infrastructure; and analytics.