Merative Blog | Technology, Data, and Analytics in Healthcare

Momentum at Merge: Reflecting on 1 year of growth

Written by Ashish Sant | Jun 27, 2024 4:00:00 AM

It was just over one year ago that I joined Merge. As I pause and reflect on that time, I’m proud of all the progress we’ve made and momentum we’ve achieved as a business, including:

  • Market recognition from KLAS, including our Best in KLAS awards and being named a leading vendor for our cloud strategy, which stems from customer feedback that they value strong partnerships with us.
  • Accelerated product innovation, adoption, and expansion of our enterprise imaging offerings and Imaging Suite, including a partnership with Indica Labs for digital pathology and our expanded AI ecosystem.
  • Recognition for our commitment to security from Censinet.
  • Introduction of a new Merge Consulting Services division for professional services offerings, to fully support clients on their transformation journeys.
  • Re-instating our annual gathering of Merge users, taking place this year at our newly renovated headquarters in Hartland, Wisconsin.

But the most important achievement we’ve made has been in supporting our clients’ progress in their cloud journeys.

Imaging organizations deal with very complex environments and the number of exams they manage in the cloud increases with each passing day. As leaders from two of our partners – MultiCare Health System and Sandwell Hospital NHS Trust – shared during a recent webinar with RSNA, despite some of the perceived complexities of cloud in medical imaging, organizations are rapidly moving their workflows to the cloud and beginning to see real, tangible results.

In fact, among organizations that partner with Merge, more than 800,000 studies per day are migrated to our cloud solutions and we are finding new ways to do this faster through more efficient tools and methods. Recognizing that no two customer environments are alike, we are committed to providing a modular, managed approach to cloud deployments that can meet our customers’ needs, wherever they are on their enterprise imaging cloud journey.

One of the biggest initiatives we’ve taken on this front is making Merge Imaging Suite available on the Microsoft Azure marketplace, enabling our imaging solutions to help Merge clients reduce their Azure commitments.

As I look back at the progress we’ve made over the past year, we have continued to work closely with our clients to help them overcome their unique challenges and move to the cloud at their own pace.

Enabling remote access to mission-critical systems for 10,000 clinicians

One example is that we’ve helped a large health system – with multiple hospitals and more than 70 preventive, specialty health care locations and labs – move to the cloud in a way that is suited to their unique environment. To support expanded clinical services for patients, they are re-establishing some foundational imaging capabilities, including a move to cloud-based infrastructure.

An executive from this organization shared at a recent event how partnering with Merge has given them confidence to accelerate their cloud journey:

“We’ve been cautious about moving our mission-critical systems into the cloud… We’re using a hybrid solution for imaging, where we have our primary data center, and our disaster recovery data center, and we’re backing up to the cloud. This is the first time we’re doing this with a clinical system, and cloud has been great... The Merge team designed a solution we could implement in a phased approach that has solved a lot for us and opened up the possibility of using advanced technology that we’ve never had before.”

These examples should resonate with any imaging organization that’s embarking on its own modernization journey of moving imaging workloads to the cloud. Keeping pace with their needs for reliable, secure, thoughtfully-designed solutions, Merge is releasing new versions of Imaging Suite components this summer. These points all taken together prove how we are continuing to meet our clients’ needs – driving product innovation to deliver value, serving as a strategic partner, and helping our clients overcome their operational and financial challenges.

If you’d like to learn more about Merge and the impact our solutions have had for clients, please reach out so we can continue the conversation.

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