Workflows

At a very high level an imaging workflow is straightforward – images are obtained, someone reads the images, and a report is generated. It does not take long to realize that real-life workflows are complex.

Common Characteristics

* Resources may be located on-site, at a colo, private cloud, public cloud, or vendor’s cloud

* Where a resource is physically located changes, and sometimes quite often

* Rarely does a workflow contain components from only one vendor

* Components will be used in multiple workflows

* There are many ways to design a workflow to end up at the same end point. Changing how you get from point “A” to point “B” will likely be transparent to the end-user.

* A workflow may be designed differently for different environments – production, disaster recovery, development, test, and training

* Many resources who work in the imaging area cannot identify the components within a workflow. All they know is that it all works and comes together.

* As someone who watches the industry, I do not see workflows becoming any less complicated, likely the opposite will happen

* Individual components in a workflow may look for issues immediately upstream and downstream of their piece which is important, but this is not a comprehensive view. Likely individual components report problems to administrators in different ways. Some may pop a message on a screen. Some may generate an email. Some may send a text. Not a cohesive approach.

Takeaway

A third party proactive monitoring solution is an excellent way to provide a single pane of glass view to imaging and clinical end-users. Some key points: 

* expect the discovery to take longer than anticipated, and expect both end-user and vendor involvement

* consider starting with one workflow – identify the components, setup your monitoring, and create a map that shows the components