Adopting a platform approach for the deployment of new medical imaging applications and AI algorithms provides an opportunity to quickly assess the value of new medical imaging applications whilst significantly reducing time, costs and risks associated with implementation.
For the healthcare IT department, a platform strategy resolves numerous key issues that can allow the department to be more efficient with their available resources. Individual deployment of applications demands a tremendous amount of work from IT, which needs to implement and configure all software and hardware requirements as well as considering the specific data flow needs of each application. Once the initial platform deployment is completed, all relevant imaging data goes through the platform. Instead of a complicated process of onboarding new software applications or individual AI algorithms, multiple applications from different providers can be easily and quickly “switched on” for use by clinical staff, with minimal additional IT work required. This significantly limits the number of physical hardware and software interfaces the IT department needs to manage. “Everyone wants to figure out how to capitalize on technology to help deliver more efficient care, better care, and quite frankly more profitable care. IT departments of most healthcare organizations are only staffed to work on the most pressing projects, and don’t have time to tinker with interesting programs that catch the eye of the clinical staff. If you told me that each radiology group we work with wanted to try out 10 different programs, I don’t know how I can prioritize that without bringing on additional staff. Even with our 50 people helping, it would be a multi-year project as each independent program is its own large project, and not a project taking a handful of hours. They’re all tens to hundreds of hours of work, financial investment, time and energy that just doesn’t exist in today’s healthcare IT department budgets.” - Stephen Willis, CTO, Canopy Partners The platform approach addresses these concerns and also simplifies an organization’s technical support needs, as it means there is only one point of the technical contact for the entire library of applications, rather than a different contact for each application vendor. Want to find out even more about the Platform Strategy? Click below to download our free eBook: