Image Management and 6 Key Steps to a Successful Digital Transformation
To successfully perform a transformation of the Imaging Management area of the business to improve efficiency and effectiveness, there needs to be both a business and technology strategy that enables the process. There are six important steps that ResultWorks, an Astrix Business, follows in order to ensure our client’s success.
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Guiding Elements
First, we facilitate the definition of guiding elements to inform the strategic direction. Guiding elements incorporate the leadership vision, key business imperatives. as well as the critical issues that are being faced by the organization to ensure that they are addressed through the strategy setting.
Aligning on these elements upfront helps to guide how we define and view the architecture, the data or information, and how the organization wants to deliver the user’s experience. These guiding elements clarify and drive the decisions regarding the strategy.
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Capabilities Definition
Identifying and capturing the business and technical capabilities in each of the imaging modalities is the next step in the process. In this phase the core business workflows for each function and the cross-cutting capabilities needed across functions are evaluated through our framework to uncover needed capabilities. This is assessed operationally as well as from a data and an analytics perspective. Mindful of imaging trends and relevant emerging technologies, more aspirational capabilities can also be captured. Once compiled, these capabilities can be viewed through the lens of different processes, the needs of different functional areas, and the needs dictated by each imaging modality.
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Conceptual Architecture
Using the capabilities as a basis, the conceptual technical architecture is developed. Capabilities are organized into platforms to support both foundational and aspirational needs. The more transactional business platforms provide more specific business capabilities to meet the needs of certain functions or modalities.
Cross-cutting capabilities are also molded into platforms that span needs across multiple areas of the business. For example, analytics capabilities can be structured into cross cutting analytics platform that can be used across the modalities. In this scenario all those groups are then able to access and use the common analytics platform rather than buying, building or maintaining their own tools.
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Business Prioritization
Once the desired capabilities and platforms have been defined, the business needs to prioritize the implementation and timing of those capabilities. Not everything can be constructed on day one and all organizations will have gated investment decisions to make.
Capabilities can be built in an extensible way where you start small and build out according to an agreed plan. For some areas, there may be sufficient capabilities for the short term allowing us to focus on other areas that may be more urgent and impactful where there is no solution currently in place. This prioritization process addresses the business priorities, the urgency from a technology perspective, and the logical progression in building out the solution to realize the strategy.
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Strategic Technology AssessmentÂ
As is the case with most organizations, there are existing solutions in place. Therefore, in parallel to performing the capabilities determination, an assessment of the organization’s current imaging systems is performed. This requires a rationalization of the existing technologies compared with the defined and agreed capabilities. A determination needs to be made whether the organization will continue to use and invest in certain technologies, that is the technologies still meet the needs of the organization. Alternatively, it may be advantageous to search for another solution that may better address not only today’s needs but also the aspirational needs of the organization going forward.
The final aspect regarding a technology assessment is understanding the vendor solution landscape. To address where technology needs to be replaced or where new technology is needed, vendor solutions need to be measured against the agreed and prioritized business and technical capabilities. Those solutions need to be viewed based on vendor functionality as it exists today with some allowance for product plans that map to the time horizon of the strategy.
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Strategic Roadmap
All of these steps culminate in the development of a high level strategic roadmap. Typically, the roadmap is broken down into three primary areas. A high level roadmap summary typically captures the key program workstreams. These workstreams can tie to a variety of different mechanisms that can be either organizational, based on product lines if the organization has product line set up, or based on business outcomes the organization wants to achieve. The workstreams defined in the high level roadmap identify further levels of detail in the projects needed to execute the workstream. This is further supported with detailed work descriptions that may serve as a preliminary charter for the project to help spin up initiatives within the right timeframe without losing strategic intent.
The roadmaps are built to be living documents that evolve overtime as progress is made and as technology continues to change. By using a platform-based model as the basis of the strategy and the future technology ecosystem, it facilitates versatility to incorporate new technologies while enabling the organization to deliver expanded business capabilities.
Transformation Requires Alignment
To ensure a successful image management program, organizations need to have the key constituents involved throughout the project. It is important to secure and maintain alignment along the way. The leadership of the organization sets the tone, drives through the business imperatives, and participates in key decisions to be made throughout the effort. Also critical is communicating decisions, intent and tradeoffs along the way.
On the other hand, the organization must ensure that stakeholder’s voices are heard and accounted for throughout the journey. Decision making, prioritization, and the development of the strategic roadmap need to tie back to the stakeholder input so that it is clear how the business needs are being addressed by the strategy. To be successful everyone needs to be part of the process and aligned to support the strategy. This alignment needs to continue throughout the implementation and as the strategy evolves.
Summary
A Digital transformation of the Imaging Management area of the business requires both a business and technology strategy. It entails several key steps to get there including a look at the guiding elements of the organization, a capabilities definition, an architecture conceptualization, a business prioritization, a strategic technology assessment, and a strategic roadmap.
Additionally, organizations need to have the key constituents involved throughout the project. The leadership of the organization must set the tone and drive the business imperatives, and participate in key decisions to be made throughout the effort.
Why It Matters To You
Across the research, product development, and clinical sectors, organizations are working to improve their operations by harmonizing imaging systems. The challenges to creating a solution for enterprise-wide image management may be numerous but they are not insurmountable.
The real challenge entails envisioning a comprehensive solution for the entire organization. The hallmark of a solution’s effectiveness is that all modalities’ unique requirements have been identified, documented, examined, understood and used as a basis for addressing the common and unique needs of each modality.
In this blog, we discuss:
- 6 Key steps to achieving a successful digital transformation of the image management area.
- What each step entails and why it is important in the overall process.
- How these steps should be undertaken to ensure success.
For more information on this topic, download our eBook
 Approaches to a Digital Transformation of Imaging Management for Biopharmaceutical Research
ResultWorks – An Astrix Business
About Astrix
For over 25 years, Astrix has been a market-leader in delivering innovative solutions through world class people, process, and technology that fundamentally improves scientific outcomes and quality of life everywhere. Founded by scientists to solve the unique challenges life sciences and other science-based business face, Astrix offers a growing array of strategic, technical, and staffing services designed to deliver value to clients across their organizations. ResultWorks, an Astrix business, achieves success for our clients through skilled facilitation and exceptional management leadership across Life Science domains from Research, Non-Clinical & Clinical Development, Regulatory Affairs, to Safety, Manufacturing, and Pharmacovigilance. To learn more about how ResultWorks enables biopharmaceutical leaders’ success, visit www.resultworksllc.com.
To learn the latest about how Astrix is transforming the way science-based business succeed today, visit www.astrixinc.com.
