An exploratory study of private sector health care provider’s use of the Archive of Imaging Data

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to gain customer information for the development of the Finnish national medical imaging service: “Archive of Imaging Data”. According to the Health Data Act, Finnish health care providers have had to archive the radiologic images in Kanta by 2019 and the storing of wider range of imaging content will be mandatory by 2029. Very few private sector health care organizations have implemented the Archive of Imaging Data. The need to develop the current service has been recognized within the Kanta Services. Within the background of this study were presented the regulations and other related topics regarding the national imaging service. Change management process for technology is presented along with Kanta’s means of improve the services of the health data exchange in Finland. An exploratory intervention was conducted in order to find out more about the situation within the private sector organizations regarding utilizing and storing imaging content. The data was gathered in an on-line survey and was analyzed by qualitative research methods. The findings show overall that utilizing images within the health care is considered important and a lighter, less complex process to join the Archive of Imaging Data would increase the deployment of the national service of exchanging the imaging content in health care. Important is to continue to inform the private sector about the Archive of Imaging Data as the results of this study showed that there is not enough information about the service in the field.