Integrated healthcare is a focal point today. What this means for imaging centers is an imperative for integrated radiology workflows and efficient patient data exchanges. However, pursuing these goals can be challenging, yet it provides many fundamental benefits to various constituencies who interact with a radiology center.

To be successful, thoughtful planning is in order to facilitate the work, and selecting an interface engine solution is necessary to support each stage of the interoperability initiative.

Outlined in this paper are several stages—developing, testing, deploying and maintaining interfaces—required to achieve the best results in an HL7 interface initiative to achieve the objectives of integrated healthcare in the radiology operations and workflows.