CASE STUDY: Dr. Donald Fithian of Torrey Pines Orthopaedic Medical Group goes Digital with Nucleus.io

Utilizing Nucleus.io as an Enterprise Professional Account for Expedited Global Connectivity

READ FULL CASE STUDY HERE

 

Dr. Fithian needed to consolidate patient images into one platform that would serve as a single source of truth and foster surgical collaboration while speeding treatment plans.

 

SITUATION

Dr. Donald Fithian runs a highly specialized consulting practice in Southern California out of Torrey Pines Orthopaedic Medical Group that serves the sports medicine community and beyond with treatment for knee and shoulder cases. His surgical expertise lends to high referral rates from physicians throughout San Diego and all across the globe on a regular basis. Also serving as Partner Emeritus at Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Fithian splits his clinical time consulting on complex disorders and uses his experience to teach training programs for fellows, residents, and students at UCSD, in the U.S. Navy and overseas.

Due to the decentralized nature of Dr. Fithian’s practice, consultation requests came in the form of various physical media that took days to weeks to arrive. Furthermore, each incoming disc containing medical images required its own proprietary reading software. In a pinch, some referrals would send video clips or individual screenshots of an image series from their phones that were hard to decipher and time-consuming for the sender to transfer.

With demand for Dr. Fithian’s clinical evaluations spanning many miles and multiple offices, it was invaluable to adopt a solution that would serve as a single source of truth. Consolidating patient images into one platform would foster surgical collaboration and speed treatment plans.

 

SOLUTION

Nucleus.io, a cloud-based medical image management platform developed by NucleusHealth, powers a suite of applications that expedite access and interpretation of medical images and makes healthcare easier for everyone – physicians, technicians, administrators, and patients.

Dr. Fithian was introduced to NucleusHealth image exchange technology in 2015 and quickly reaped the benefits of expedited global connectivity that a web-based solution could deliver. What began as a means to digitally receive DICOM from patients and referring orthopaedic surgeons, turned into a robust consolidated Enterprise Professional Account with indefinite archiving. The secure and easy setup of personalized guest uploader links allowed Dr. Fithian to build a sharing network of peers outside of his main organization without the hassle of disparate systems.

To avoid the nuisance of receiving discs that each use a different reading software, Dr. Fithian assigns a guest uploader link to each office for the staff to load images into his Nucleus.io account. These secure and identifiable links do not require an account for the uploader and can be assigned to individuals or organizations, all while managing imaging data on one platform. Dr. Fithian doesn’t have to be in any one place, or on any particular device, to see these images – no matter what other facilities or referring physicians use.

Continue Reading