Fujifilm’s ties to healthcare date all the way back to 1936, when it released its very first x-ray film. Today, Fujifilm is a large global company—it reported revenues of more than $22 billion in the last year—and its healthcare business alone was responsible for approximately $3.8 billion in revenue.

As the power of information technology expands, the healthcare system has begun to shrink. Integrated IT systems are allowing providers to communicate across an enterprise like never before.

At ProMedica, a 13-hospital system serving northwestern Ohio and southeastern Michigan, the lineup of clinical departments soon to benefit from leadership’s decision to expand a long-installed radiology PACS into an enterprise VNA practically reads like a who’s who of the entire system. Cardiology, pathology and ophthalmology are on line or in line to be soon. So too are dermatology, wound care, maternal-fetal medicine, outpatient physician practices and more.

It’s no secret that healthcare professionals are being asked to do more with less, to coordinate across an enterprise and deliver results greater than the sum of a provider’s parts.

Despite its immense institutional know-how and its pure heft—11 hospitals, 5,000 medical staffers, $4 billion in net revenues—the Hospital Corporation of America’s multi-state, Denver-based Continental Division still found itself sending CDs and printouts via, among other low-tech image-sharing options, the chests of patients in ambulances and helicopters.

Clinical Innovation + Technology was on hand at HIMSS14 to cover healthcare IT trends. We stopped in the Vital Images booth to learn more about images and the EMR.

Nowhere more than in health care are the stakes higher for quality. That said, neither is there a magic bullet that will make health-care providers more effective, according to Kelly Court, the chief quality officer for the Wisconsin Hospital Association (WHA).

Many feel that the EMR is central to the health of the enterprise and promises to meet many needs. However, as stakeholders drill down into individual departments, there are areas where the EMR may fail to address the specific workflow of the caregivers in those specialties.