Growth Opportunities in the Global Enterprise Medical Imaging Workflow Orchestration Solutions Market, 2022

Workflow Efficiency and Increasing Complexity in the Reading Environment Drive the Demand for Automation

The global enterprise medical imaging workflow orchestration solutions industry is undergoing rapid changes because of new technological developments, new clinical and administrative needs, and the introduction of new policies and regulations, making it necessary for industry participants to innovate to maintain a competitive edge.

The healthcare industry is under constant margin pressure because of decreasing reimbursements and increasing cost of care. Consolidation in the hospital industry will be needed to leverage the economies of scale to remain in the increasingly tough market environment. Such consolidation, however, brings integration challenges because clinical systems within merging entities are large in number and variety, creating siloed data within the system and effectively preventing the realization of efficiencies envisioned by mergers and acquisitions.

The scope of the study is to analyze the market drivers and restraints for the global workflow orchestration market. The ultimate goal of a workflow orchestration solution is to optimize the reading workflow by ensuring that any image acquired in an institution will be reported by the appropriate in-house or affiliated subspecialist or radiologist preferred by the requesting physician, all within the agreed service level agreement (SLA) for a particular study type. In addition, the orchestration solution needs to consider distributing the reading workloads equally among the reading group, preferably assigning to the radiologist who has been credentialed by the patient’s payer.

The digitalization of imaging has created an entire set of new challenges that were not brought to the fore until the recent past because the consolidation of the imaging infrastructure was not a priority based on the lack of an urgent need to rationalize the use of imaging.

With the advent of cost economics in imaging departments and the growing adoption of the value-based care reimbursement models, the need to introduce efficiency within the imaging workflow is becoming a topmost priority in institutions that have digitalized their imaging departments. The siloed implementation of digital solutions, such as PACS, represents only one side of the complexity. The reading environment has evolved into a sophisticated marketplace, driving the need for institutions to invest in modern workflow solutions.

Workflow orchestration forms an important pillar of the enterprise imaging platform. An intelligent workflow engine should seek to balance higher quality care, efficiency, radiologist and subspecialist availability, compliance to SLAs, and alignment to department goals. A workflow engine is almost always bundled with an enterprise imaging solution but is, in some instances, procured as a standalone solution, which will need extensive customization to work with a third-party PACS or vendor-neutral archive (VNA).

While a VNA and enterprise PACS represent the consolidation of archives from multiple departments, workflow orchestration and universal viewer represent the efficiency tools that increases the productivity of radiologists.