Nicklaus Children’s Hospital has achieved HIMSS Digital Imaging Adoption Model (DIAM) Stage 6 recognition, becoming the first hospital in the world to receive this accolade since the model was updated in 2019 to have a focus on enterprise imaging. The DIAM Stage 6 achievement demonstrates the hospital’s commitment to implementing health IT strategy to improve patient outcomes and efficiency of care. 

The HIMSS Digital Imaging Adoption Model, which has stages from 0 to 7, helps to evaluate the maturity of IT-supported processes in medical imaging and supports healthcare organizations in advancing digital environments.

“Nicklaus Children’s is committed to optimizing patient care outcomes and efficiency through our use of IT solutions. We are honored to be the world’s first to achieve DIAM Stage 6, leveraging the new enterprise imaging criteria. This is truly emblematic of our commitment to combining clinical and digital excellence,” said Dr. David Seo, Chief Information Officer and Vice President. 

To achieve the recognition, Nicklaus Children’s teams developed IT processes and workflows to support the management and sharing of digital images within the radiology, cardiology and cardiovascular surgery service lines. The focus was to ensure that key stakeholders can access and share images in a safe and protected environment. 

In the DIAM, stages 0 to 4 include sequential compliance goals. Organizations must meet the requirements of lower stages before they can advance to stages 5 to 7. The highest three stages are non-hierarchical and show different options for making use of advanced software-related features in imaging.

Nicklaus Children’s has a longstanding tradition of utilizing the HIMSS maturity model adoption road maps. Most recently, the hospital received HIMSS Stage 7 recognition for both inpatient and ambulatory services on the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) and Outpatient Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (O-EMRAM), respectively.