We all know that time is precious. But do we really?

As of 2012, the average life expectancy for a person born in the United States was 78.74 years. That seems like a good amount of time, and for the most part it is. But for 200,000 people every year it is an expectancy they will never fulfill.

The most unfortunate deaths are those that are preventable, like many forms of heart disease. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, taking up to 800,000 lives each year — That’s 30 percent of all deaths in the country. Amazingly, at least 200,000 of those deaths each year could be prevented, and more than half of those deaths involve people under the age of 65.

In its 2013 report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that about 80 percent of deaths from coronary artery disease — a name for heart disease caused by narrowing of the arteries which leads to reduced blood flow to the heart — can be attributed to preventable factors like obesity, poor physical activity, heavy drinking, eating unhealthy foods and not keeping your blood pressure and cholesterol under control.

While cardiologists can recommend general guidelines that help patients develop or maintain good health, it can be difficult to know the full extent of a patient’s well-being without having access to or knowledge of all the facts. For instance, if a cardiology practice uses a general EHR instead of a cardiology-specific one with its diagnostics, chances are they are missing out on 80% of the clinical data that will drive clinical decision support and allow truly transformative care within the practice.

General EHRs are just that, non-specific, and have a tough time translating certain information from other departments. Each department has their own specific needs for patient information, tools, diagnostics, etc., and a general EHR can go only so far. They are limited in their scope by design.

To make fully informed decisions a cardiologist needs a heart specialist database that can record and compare heart data — the kind of information that in the most serious cases can help determine whether a critical prescription or procedure could save someone’s life. Without that specialized database, cardiologists often find themselves spending a lot of time scanning paperwork and digging through graphs and health records to try to evaluate a patient’s condition. And if a patient is treated at a different hospital or medical center, important pieces of their history — prescriptions they had taken, even the outcomes of surgeries — may be inaccessible altogether.

Cardiology specific EHRs and diagnostics like those developed by the cardiologists at Objective Medical Systems bypass all those limitations. The OMS Stage 2 Certified EHR is tightly integrated with 16 cardiovascular diagnostic modules, enabling a 360-degree view of the patient. Clinical decision support rules are based on 5000+ discrete data elements per patient encompassing demographics, clinical history, labs and diagnostic tests as well as medications and allergies.

As a Client-Server System, the CVIS (Cardiovascular Information System) by Objective Medical Systems was designed by cardiologists for cardiologists to provide an intuitive, all-in-one database that improves efficiency and documentation, reduces errors, shares more information quicker and saves both time and money.

The system receives data currently from medical devices via DICOM SR, HL7 and XML Interfaces (OMS Integration Server). A built-in reference table of values enables the system to generate the report automatically as soon as the database is updated for each study. Background analysis of the data (for predefined CDS rules) occurs automatically and these recommendations are provided to the physician in the EHR dashboard.

Heart disease is an unfortunate diagnosis for anyone. That’s why a group of cardiology professionals originally founded Objective Medical Systems: to provide tools that help cardiologists better detect and manage the health of their patients.

At OMS, we have designed technology exclusively concentrating on cardiology, and we have partnered with some of the finest companies in our industry to deliver a world-class cardiology experience. This narrowed focus allows us to truly enhance patient care and, most importantly, helps those that have devoted their career to the battle against heart disease.

For more information or questions about our cardiovascular suite, email [email protected] or call Toll-Free 1 (855) 378-3431.