vDHIMS 2011

The first PACS Conference was held at sea in 2001 on Holland America's ms Maasdam. There were 30 attendees and eight exhibitors. In 2002, the PACS Conference expanded and became land-bound in San Antonio, Texas, where it remained until 2008. During that eight-year period, the meeting grew with a national and international audience approaching 500 attendees with over 50 participating medical informatics exhibitors. In 2008, the name changed to DHIMS (Digital Healthcare Information Management Systems) to more accurately reflect the content of the conference. The DHIMS conference was not held in 2009 and 2010 because of the declining economy and subsequent budget constraints for both attendees and exhibitors for face-to-face meetings.

As a result of the continued interest in the DHIMS Conference and in order to meet the still present economic constraints, the conference will be offered in a virtual format. The vDHIMS educational forum will provide state-of-the-art healthcare informatics to a wider US and international audience at a significantly reduced cost for both attendees and healthcare companies by eliminating the burden of travel and associated expenses.

Continuing education credits can be obtained by participating in the online lectures and completing a multiple choice exam. These credits may fulfill the continuing education requirements of your professional society and/or certification organization.

To keep current with the latest healthcare innovations you can visit virtual exhibits presented by participating healthcare companies. To see company clinical applications in clinical use you can view case studies demonstrating applications in a clinical environment. For more detailed information, you can download sponsoring company White Papers from the vDHIMS website.

The vDHIMS 2011 virtual conference "The Evolving Integrated Digital Healthcare Enterprise (DHE)" will be presented as three related 9-hour virtual seminars, each held over three days from 11:00am to 2:00pm EDT. This time period was selected so the lectures could be attended live from western European and African time zones to western North and South American time zones. The lectures will be presented live and followed by a live question and answer period. After the live presentation, the lectures will be online until November 30, 2011 to view and take the multiple choice exam for credit at your convenience.

interoperability and concludes with issues relating to migrating data. Second day topics include storage and content management and will discuss the requirements and the selection of a company for an application neutral and standards-based system as well as the pros and cons of out-sourcing. The final day will discuss the interoperability requirements of clinical applications such as the EMR, EHR and PHR and the sharing of patient information. Additionally, the value of using service-oriented architecture (SOA) to enhance interoperability will be evaluated.

The ePosium "Workflow and Productivity in the Unified DHE" will be held on Tuesday, September 20, 2011. This seminar will focus on the clinical applications in Radiology that deal with image interpretation and reporting. The first half will focus on the requirements, selection criteria and pros and cons of an integrated radiology information system (RIS) and picture archiving and communication system (PACS) preferably known as a radiology information management system (RIMS). The concept of an integrated information management system is applicable for other 'ologies' in the DHE. The seminar will conclude by demonstrating the advances in the visualization of the massive amounts of information contained in contemporary imaging studies by examining 3-D and 4-D presentation options for CT, MR and other modalities as well as fused multi-modality sets.

The final seminar of the year 2011 viz; "Operating and Communicating in the Unified DHE" will be held in November. This seminar will present important clinical and technology topics of working in the DHE as well as ergonomic issues relating to the working environment in which clinical studies are interpreted. During the first day, clinical issues relating to ordering and reporting clinical results as well as the impact of "Meaningful Use" as it relates to images will be discussed. On the second day, technical issues will be discussed regarding how clinical information is delivered to the physician ranging from hand-held to stationary devices and the requirements for the supporting infrastructure including security and privacy will be covered. The third day will conclude with ergonomics of interpreting images and the potential affect on the musculoskeletal system of those interpreting the images, to the environment in which the interpretation process takes place. It will also include the optimal method to interact with the components of the interpretation platform – the pointing device, keyboard and monitor.