Improving How We Share Information Directly Impacts Your Medical Care
The goal for healthcare is to return patients to a state of better health as quickly as possible. In some situations, your doctor will require additional information from medical imaging providers to accurately diagnose your condition. The sooner your doctor receives this information the sooner he or she can begin a plan for treatment.
Oregon Community Imaging, LLC (OCI) was established as a cooperative partnership among community healthcare organizations to improve how medical imaging data is shared and communicated in the care and treatment of patients. Historically, each healthcare organization that performs medical imaging has maintained a separate system for archiving patient medical images. These images may be stored in a printed film format and archived using film jackets organized on shelves or stored in a digital electronic format on computer based systems. Over time, it is common for patients to have medical imaging tests performed at a variety of community facilities. To provide the best possible interpretation of a patient’s images it is necessary for the physician reading the study to have access to previous studies, commonly referred to as comparison exams. The interpreting physician compares the new exam side by side with any previous studies to determine if the area of interest has changed over time.
The method healthcare facilities have historically used to exchange study data for comparison purposes is to send images on film or in an electronic format on CD by courier or through a mail delivery service. Transferring studies in this manner can delay the final interpretation of a study by many hours to several days which can delay an accurate diagnosis which is necessary in developing an effective plan of treatment for patients.
OCI represents a modern change in direction from historic radiology data transfer practices in order to provide physician offices with immediate, online access to a patient’s medical information. It accomplishes this through a state of the art, independent and secure data network and collaborative healthcare partnerships.
Oregon Community Imaging is a service reserved exclusively for the authorized use by 
licensed healthcare providers. OCI locates it core hardware infrastructure at the Flexential colocation facility in Hillsboro, Oregon which is a leading provider of data center and hosted computer solutions in the Western United States. To ensure compliance with the safety and security of clients like OCI, Flexentialvoluntarily subscribes to third party audit activities that ensure its security, safeguards and control activities are of the highest level. From these independent audits, Flexentialhas earned the widely recognized SAS70 Type II certification. From the core hardware system located at Flexential, each member organization that archives patient medical images to the OCI system is connected through dedicated, private data lines (commonly referred to as point to point network circuits) that extend directly between each facility and the Flexentialdata center. OCI uses the web based Philips iSite image distribution solution to deliver reports and images to the community of healthcare providers for the care and treatment of their patients. The Philips iSite system provides immediate access to diagnostic-quality images for clinicians and referring physicians at any time through its secure and encrypted web based viewing system. As an added measure of protection, OCI systems employ strict audit controls that can be used to monitor access to each and every archived record within the system.