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SIIM Workflow Initiative in Medicine (SWIM™)

The latest project within TRIP™ is the SIIM Workflow Initiative in Medicine (SWIM™) project. SWIM™ is defining a workflow lexicon so standardize terms can be used to compare imaging practices, improve efficiencies, and foster the development of best practices. Several SIIM corporate members are SWIM/TRIP Corporate Partners (Agfa Healthcare, Carestream, GE Healthcare, Siemens, Toshiba) and are at the forefront, working together with researchers and providers to develop the processes and dashboards to improve provider performance and enhance quality patient care.

Upcoming Events at the SIIM 2013 Annual Meeting

Demonstration project

Hot Topic session and Scientific Paper presentation

Learning Lab - SWIM'ing through your data...

Learn More About SWIM...

Standards for Business Analytics and Departmental Workflow. Bradley J. Erickson, Christopher Meenan, and Steve Langer. Journal of Digital Imaging; Published online: 11 October 2012.

SWIM Project Update - Corporate Forum (March 18, 2013)

Introductory video on the SWIM/TRIP Initiative (June 2012)

The Promise of SWIM/TRIP: Improving Quality Through Better Data (SIIMshare, May 31, 2012)

SWIM/TRIP Radiology Workflow Nomenclature (SIIMshare, October 7, 2011)

How to Become Involved

Review the SWIM Workflow Normalized Names - DRAFT (September 2011)

Pull down data from the SWIM/TRIP cloud-based dataset and use your own analytics tools to explore key performance indicators and workflow events from the research database.

Share your experience and comments on SIIMshare Blog and the SWIM Online Forum. (Note: you must first log in on the Knowledge Center/Forum page to see and access the SWIM online forum)

If you are interested in participating in the SWIM project, please send us an e-mail.

SWIM Demonstrations at SIIM Annual Meetings

The SIIM 2013 SWIM Demonstration will take place on Saturday, June 8, 11:30 - 1:30 pm in the exhibit hall. This demonstration will show how a variety of tools by leading vendors and academic sites can query one or more differnt PACS, RIS, or other enterprise system with queries basedon the SWIM Lexicon to measure and improve clincial imaging workflow or perform vendor-neutral analytics.

At the SIIM 2012 Annual Meeting, a TRIP "Think Group Session" was held and a Data Set Collection Focus Group was organized. Focus group members include: Brad Genereaux, Paul Lipton, Eduardo Lopez, Chris Meenan, Glenn Potter, Wyatt Tellis, and Max Warnock.

At the SIIM 2011 Annual Meeting, a team from the University of Maryland, Mayo Clinic, Agfa Healthcare, and GE Healthcare presented a the TRIP vendor-neutral business analytics demonstration.

The demo successfully met the goal of showing the benefits of an industry standard specification for medical imaging metrics with multiple different vendor/open source BI dashboards connected to specification conforming radiology information systems. Presentation of the radiology workflow metrics differed, but the data meaning was the same, therefore comparable across organizations. The steps taken to develop this demo were to: 1) develop a research database of workflow events simulating an imaging department; 2) define web services to access the information; and 3) create interoperable dashboards that show access to information using the web services.

Dr. Brad Erickson, Chair of the SWIM Committee

In this video, (2:43 minutes) Dr. Brad Erickson, Chair of the TRIP
Subcommittee, summarizes the progress made at the first meeting
of the TRIP workflow working group and announces a name contest
for the project.Send suggestions to trip@siimweb.org.

SIIM TRIP Workflow Initiative Backgrounder (PDF)

TRIP™ is a SIIM initiative to spearhead research, education, and discovery of innovative solutions to problems related to: 

1) improving efficiency of interpretation of large data sets
2) improving the timeliness and effectiveness of communication, and
3) decreasing medical errors. 

The ultimate goal of the initiative is to improve the quality and safety of patient care.

A TRIP conference along with several forums and white papers were developed between 2004-2007 that raised awareness and support for TRIP research and educational activities by bringing the best of industry, government, and academia together to interact and share results. To learn more about the history of the SIIM TRIP Initiative go to the (2004-2007) TRIP Website.

The SIIM Workflow Initiative in Medicine (SWIM™) begun in 2010 is the current TRIP project.