BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Life Image, the world’s largest global medical evidence network specializing in curating diagnostic images for care delivery and research, announced today the launch of its Patient Connect Portal™. The platform gives patients control over their own images and medical data to help manage their health over the long term.
Most patient portals do not have the ability to collect, assemble, add and store complicated diagnostic images that are critical to treating chronic and complex conditions. For patients with conditions such as respiratory, oncological, neurological, and COVID-19-related conditions, as well as musculoskeletal illnesses, diagnostic images are especially important. With these conditions, imaging exams taken over time must be compared to be clinically useful for diagnosis, treatment, therapy evaluation and post-acute patient monitoring.
Life Image conducted a patient survey recently with 1,300 respondents that showed nearly 40% of patients are still required to physically travel to pick up CDs if they want access to their medical records and related imaging, and a surprising 23% are still given medical images on physical films. According to the survey, 66% of respondents have access to at least one portal connected to their provider’s EHR, however only 18% of respondents have been able to ever receive records of any type digitally (email, app or through a portal) which indicates that, while patients have access to portals, records and information are still not being effectively shared.
Patient Connect Portal is a user-friendly online digital application that allows patients to own and control their data and images, even when their care was received over time in a variety of locations. Patient Connect Portal also allows patients to easily share their data with specialists and care teams regardless of where they are located.
“Your doctors need complete medical records to give you the best possible care. Unfortunately, those records aren’t usually in one place or readily available when you need them most — such as times of emergency or when you are traveling between doctors for urgent diagnosis and treatment,” said Matthew A. Michela, President and CEO of Life Image. “Our hospital customers and their patients are telling us that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly heightened the awareness of the need for a solution that makes patient sharing of diagnostic images possible. They realize that care coordination is improved by digital access to medical imaging while it also reduces the potential of infection that comes from handling CDs. In response to this demand, Life Image built upon the foundation of our Mammosphere application and is now making Patient Connect Portal broadly available for all clinical conditions.”
For more than four years, Mammosphere by Life Image has been helping women digitally and securely collect, store and share their breast images to enable better breast health and cancer treatment. Diagnosis of abnormal breast tissue relies on comparisons of prior mammograms over time as every woman has unique breast tissue. Mammosphere is being used by large health systems around the country and is supporting the WISDOM study, a five-year research study of more than 100,000 women to assess the effectiveness of breast screen guidelines.
In addition to improving care coordination, the Patient Connect Portal helps the industry meet federal requirements and rising consumer expectations to control their own data. Under HIPAA 45 CFR § 164.524, providers must give patients, upon request, access to their protected health information in the form and format of the individual's choosing, including electronic format and via third-party application. In order to address ongoing industry resistance and barriers to interoperability, new regulations released in March 2020 from The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology of the 21st Century Cures Act are mandating that patients be allowed greater control and access to their health data and targeting technologies that block information access. Patient Connect Portal has been designed to resolve these types of problems and some of the most technically challenging issues involving imaging.
For additional information about the Patient Connect Portal by Life Image, please visit LifeImage.com/solutions/patient-connect.
About Life Image
Life Image is the world’s largest medical evidence network providing access to points of care and curated clinical and imaging data. It is the only company in the market today with Real World Imaging™ that provides large-scale, heterogeneous, de-identified imaging sets that are linkable to other longitudinal data. Founded in 2008, Life Image has created a digital platform using industry-leading interoperability standards to connect 10,000 facilities with more than 150,000 U.S. providers and 58,000 global clinics. Its network of hospitals, physicians, patients, life sciences, medical devices, and telehealth is interconnected with a technical ecosystem of EHRs, PACS, AI solutions, cloud environments, and analytics platforms. Life Image is the parent company of Mammosphere, a patient engagement platform that empowers women to take control of their breast health by storing all their breast imaging in one secure, online location.
For more information about Life Image, please visit www.lifeimage.com, visit its blog and follow the company on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
