The cardiovascular service line, whether existing within the confines of an acute-care environment or outpatient setting, is a myriad of complex systems all delivering their own flavor of data used for diagnosis and treatment planning. While medical images are important to the workflow in this service line, they are used as a correlate to a variety of other types of data. I heard it best said that radiology primarily utilizes the visualization of the medical image while cardiology uses the merging of different data, with images being important but playing second fiddle.

Two key requirements for today’s cardiovascular information systems (CVIS) are solid integrations with both enterprise-wide electronic medical record (EMR) systems and the catheterization lab’s hemodynamic monitoring system. Both will enable increased efficiency, faster workflows and the ability to meet data integration requirements mandated under U.S. healthcare reform in the coming years.