An announcement made recently by Amazon Web Services (AWS) is likely to create considerable buzz at the upcoming 2022 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago. AWS's service line, Amazon HealthLake Imaging, is partnering with Intelerad Medical Systems and Arterys to help introduce AWS's cloud-based diagnostic imaging storage and retrieval solutions to the radiology community.

In the Amazon HealthLake Imaging announcement, Tehsin Syed, General Manager of Health AI, and Taha Kass-Hout, M.D., Vice President, Machine Learning and Chief Medical Officer (both with Amazon HealthLake Imaging), describe how AWS is working with these partners to accelerate adoption of cloud-based solutions to help transition enterprise imaging workflows to the cloud and accelerate the pace of innovation. AWS hopes use of the cloud will achieve higher scalability and viewing performance for their PACS systems and AI platform.

As we have written, despite the many technological advances in diagnostic imaging -- and the widespread consensus in the industry of the need to #ditchthedisc -- barriers to seamless diagnostic image exchange between healthcare institutions have persisted. 

Achieving seamless image interchange will not come easily, and these developments have not happened overnight. For a better understanding, I urge you to watch this presentation made by Intelarad's CEO, Morris Panner, at the RSNA meeting in 2019.