Klinikum Chemnitz hospital links radiology to EHR
- 6 June 2008
Klinikum Chemnitz, one of the largest hospitals in Germany, has become one of the first to link its teleradiology service with an electronic health record using Siemens Healthcare’s Soarian system.
As a result radiology data, including diagnosis and corresponding findings, can now be stored in a single shared health record, and then used by different hospital departments treating a patient.
The new system will also help further develop the hospital as a regional leader in teleradiology services and clinical expertise.
Siemens supplied and implemented the system, including the software for radiology information communication as well as the Soarian Integrated Care (Soarian IC) eHealth Solution for the electronic health record.
The implementation of the radiology image communications system will enable Klinikum Chemnitz Hospital to more effectively act as a regional centre of expertise, providing radiology expertise to county hospitals, medical centres and practicing physicians.
Already the hospital is a centre of expertise the fields of neurosurgery, traumatology, angiology and radiology.
The extended teleradiology links mean that if a patient is seen in an emergency at a linked county hospital a diagnosis can, for instance, be performed without having to have an expert on site.
Before the implementation of the new integrated EHR system images and results from remote diagnosis previously had to be printed out and filed in paper records. Using the Siemens technology, all data now automatically flows from telediagnostics into one EHR.
Professor Olaf Schlimpert, head of the medical information technology department at Klinikum Chemnitz, said: “As one of the largest hospitals in Germany and due to its wide performance spectrum and staff of medical specialists, Klinikum Chemnitz is an important partner for the hospitals in the region.”
Prof. Schlimpert said telemedicine enabled the expertise of the hospital’s specialist clinicians to be made accessible remotely.
“This offers cost-cutting potentials to the entire network and provides the patient with healthcare close to home with fewer relocations. In the future, not only institutional borders, but also the interfaces between outpatient, inpatient, and rehab treatment will disappear altogether.”
Volker Wetekam, chief executive officer of global solutions at Siemens Healthcare, said: “With Soarian Integrated Care, we were able to offer Klinikum Chemnitz a solution for a single communications and IT platform for trans-sectoral cooperation.”
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