An Interview with the Carequality Imaging Use Case Implementers

Imagine you had a cell phone plan that only allowed you to call other customers within the same carrier network. That is the situation most healthcare providers experience when joining a data sharing network. Carequality is a network-to-network trust framework that brings together the entire healthcare industry to overcome this challenge by providing a national-level, consensus built, common interoperability framework to enable health information exchange between and among health data sharing networks. The RSNA partnered with Carequality in 2019 to develop an implementation guide to enable the Imaging Exchange Use Case. The implementation guide was published in December 2019 for early adopters to sign up as implementers to the Carequality framework. Exchange standards must be clearly laid out so that all implementers can easily follow and be held accountable to enable interoperability of medical imaging. The guide was reviewed and tested by implementers and approved for production use in March 2021. Since the launch of the implementation guide, five Carequality Implementers have participated in Carequality’s Image Exchange Use Case: Ambra Health, Hyland, Life Image, Nuance, and Philips. These implementers recognized a gap in image interoperability and the need for change and collaboration. Carequality has asked each of the implementers to share their thoughts on issues pertinent to becoming an implementer and imaging interoperability with the hope that the reader will gain insight as to the evolution of network-based image exchange.