Address your imaging needs today. Face the future with confidence.

At Merge by Merative, our goal is to provide the tools that help clinicians do what they best: interpreting images and delivering exceptional patient care.

Mission:  Advancing medical imaging through innovative solutions and unparalleled customer support, empowering care teams to provide faster, smarter, quality patient outcomes from first click to final read, from any device, anywhere, any time.

We put imaging teams— and the patients they serve— at the center of our products and services to help address the most pressing issues facing imaging organizations today: ballooning study volumes, physician burnout and dissatisfaction, disparate and fragmented patient data, inefficient workflows, and managing the security and performance of complex IT infrastructures.

Used by approximately 3,000 healthcare organizations worldwide, including over 1,500 providers across the United States, Merge imaging solutions are market-leading solutions built on 35+ years of imaging industry expertise to help imaging organizations like yours conquer the challenges of today and face the future with confidence.

Merge aims to be your trusted transformation partner, providing an enterprise-wide imaging solutions platform for your unique ecosystem, that supports your departments with clinical tools, helps you expand into enterprise imaging, and transform to embrace cloud services – at your pace for more scalability, reliability, security, and support for clinical workflows.

Merge Imaging Suite Clinical Use Cases

The Merge Imaging Suite platform leverages these new enterprise imaging solutions to address the most common challenges across the end-to-end imaging process – all while evolving with you over time so you can continue providing optimal patient care outcomes.

Six of the 10 largest healthcare systems (IDNs) in the U.S. have standardized on Merge.  Here are a few real-world, tangible benefits that Merge Imaging Suite delivers for reading teams and their organizations:

• One common worklist to rule them all – vendor agnostic and AI-powered
• 23% more productive reading for physicians when tracking the progression of lung lesions¹
• 50% fewer actions required to efficiently read a general study²
• 34% more equitable distribution of studies across the organization³
• Sub-second time to first image when traversing studies⁴
• Ability to handle multi-million study caseloads per year, with doubling volume⁵
• Image-enabling patient portals – in the case of one health system, this meant creating a system where over 250,000 images had been accessed by patients within a year⁶

Healthcare organizations invest significant resources in systems to collect and share patient imaging data. Yet, physicians often report difficulty finding what they need to make the most accurate diagnoses. It remains time-consuming to sift through large studies to decipher the real reasons for an ordered exam and to cross-reference findings with prior exams. Expanded daily workloads, shortages of reading professionals, and critical clinical decision-making in high-pressure, high-interruption conditions drive physician burnout and strain the quality of patient care.

Merge’s portfolio of imaging workflow solutions are designed by clinical and technical experts, informed directly by client input to provide a way out of this conundrum. Modular, interoperable, and designed to be compatible with existing imaging environments, Merge Imaging Suite solutions provide intuitive and modernized ways for physicians to access, read, and share patient imaging data – and best of all, does so without interrupting clinical processes.

Merge solutions help imaging teams to manage caseloads more effectively within and across departments, thanks to robust image management, real-time collaboration features, powerful data visualizations, time-saving automations, and an AI-powered caseload assignment engine that distributes workloads more fairly.

We firmly believe a healthcare system produces optimal patient outcomes when everyone practices at the “top of their license.” Productivity and job satisfaction increase among clinicians and their teams when they have effective tools and technologies to do what they do best. 

How Merge makes clinical workflows more productive

Usability
Take advantage of imaging solutions that adapt to your preferred workflows, reduce ambiguity, and enable visibility across clinical teams, departments, and the entire enterprise.

Dependability
Find peace of mind in knowing that these solutions will work the way you expect – backed by a 24/7 support team able to answer your questions at any time – so that you can focus entirely on treating patients.

Distribution
Distribute workloads equitably across reading teams, according to the rules of your practice, powered by AI. 

The tools enhancing and streamlining your clinical workflows

Merge PACS™
A flexible radiology solution designed to improve reading workflows anywhere in the enterprise. A high-performance viewer combined with a versatile platform that simplifies physicians’ reading activities (including support for mammography). Helps organizations to scale and access AI insights.*

Merge Workflow Orchestrator™
Unifies imaging studies, patient data, and AI results into a single modern interface that gives physicians a personalized experience. Native AI “learns” how to distribute cases across reading teams automatically and more equitably.

Merge Cardio™
A cardiology solution that allows users to access and manage patients’ integrated cardiovascular data from a centralized, web-enabled system, from anywhere, at any time.*

Merge Hemo™
Provides real-time, automated documentation for cardiac cath lab data and images, which are incorporated into the patient record at the point of care.

*Not FDA-cleared for diagnostic use on mobile devices. 

Clinical staff who collaborate on patient care are often spread out across multiple sites. For example, experts work in different locations from consultant specialists, and referring physicians may work for outside organizations. The ability to access and view a diverse range of medical images for patient care from any location isn’t just a benefit for the entire care team – it's necessary.

The Merge Imaging Suite solution for enterprise imaging can help by centralizing images into a single repository that can be accessed from any location by all care team members. A universal viewer allows any type of image to be read, with helpful tools to support measurements and advanced visualizations.

In a 2022 survey, 86% of patients said they wanted access to imaging data in their electronic health record – for example, through a patient portal. Very few (7.5%) were concerned about possibly seeing their data before their physician does.⁷  

The desire for transparency and patient access to their own medical information was codified in the United States with the CURES Act, which makes it compulsory for healthcare organizations to deliver on this growing consumer demand. However, many organizations have not complied due to perceived high costs and the complexity of image-enabling patient portals.

Merge imaging solutions help providers maintain compliance and deliver on patient demands for access by image-enabling their patient portals. 

Solutions for enterprise imaging 

Merge Universal Viewer™
A regulatory-cleared, zero-download web-based diagnostic viewer that allows healthcare providers and care teams across the enterprise, and patients themselves, to access images from any healthcare application, anywhere.* 

Merge VNA™ (Vendor Neutral Archive)
A highly scalable and reliable vendor-neutral archive that enables users to store, manage, and share images enterprise-wide from disparate storage systems, specialties, service lines, and sites—whatever the source or format.

*Not FDA-cleared for diagnostic use on mobile devices. 

Solving burnout through teleradiology 

“Merge allows our radiologists to become more engaged members of the medical staff. A multi-disciplinary approach to medicine like this is the gold standard and the key to success these days.”
—Patrick Santore Jr., Founding Partner and CEO, Northern Light Medical Management

Northern Light Medical Management increased radiologist capacity, reduced burnout, and fostered more stable work-life balance with innovative teleradiology support. Read their story. 

Building an enterprise imaging ecosystem for healthcare providers across the Pacific Northwest

“What MultiCare needed was an enterprise imaging solution that could expand through all the ‘ologies, not just radiology. When we looked at what Merge was offering, the decision just made sense.”
—Leonard Santos, Director of IT Application Services, MultiCare Health System

MultiCare Health System aims to create an enterprise imaging foundation to secure its own future and the future of smaller clinics and rural hospitals that need support providing patient care. Dig into how they did it.

How Carle Health integrated 8 hospitals’ imaging data

“I asked our leadership team; how big should we go with the PACS and VNA implementation? I was told, ‘Solve the problem with something that can grow with us.’ That’s why we chose Merge.”
—Dr. Doug Morton, Neuroradiologist, Carle Health

Carle Health deployed an enterprise imaging strategy, thanks to combined Merge VNA and Merge Universal Viewer support, to absorb and integration nearly 900 terabytes of patient. Learn how. 

Enterprise imaging in action

“We wanted to get away from stovepipe systems for storing images, and go toward a centralized archive. We had different databases for different sets of studies. It was inefficient, driving up costs, and made it more difficult for our clinical side to see a patient’s images and for our IT side to maintain those systems. Merge helped us streamline all of that by consolidating to one system.”
—Karl Seitz, IT Enterprise Imaging, Presbyterian Healthcare Services

Presbyterian Healthcare increased patient engagement and met regulatory requirements by image-enabling their patient portal. See how they pulled it off.

Look inside the 5-year plan to revolutionize hospital care in Costa Rica

“Merge believed in us on the most challenging project in our region. We received the best and most professional support, at every step, from expert people who helped us both remotely and on site. We managed all of our challenges side by side with Merge. They made this project successful.”
—Adrian Jimenez, Senior Manager, SOIN Costa Rica

SOIN is consolidating disparate hospitals across Costa Rice with an enterprise imaging foundation from Merge. Explore how they’re doing it. 

Taking a holistic medical imaging approach to Blanchard Valley Health System

“Having an imaging archive that is always available and easily accessible is how integral to how we deliver patient care... Our providers heavily use Merge PACS. They have a huge affinity for it. We’ve had providers move away but continue using Merge PACS at their practice because it’s so easy and comfortable for them.”
—Serena Baum, Radiology and Cardiology PACS Administrator, Blanchard Valley Health System 

BVHS built a comprehensive holistic imaging strategy, focused on optimizing clinical workflows and easing user adoption, with support from Merge. How they did it.

The promise of diagnostic AI is to accelerate and augment clinicians’ capabilities, so they can better manage the rising volume and velocity of imaging studies. AI-assisted workflow solutions help determine which studies may be considered routine findings, which may require higher prioritization for review of findings, and how to fairly assign cases to reading physicians so that caseloads are managed equitably and matched to each reader’s specialties.

Diagnostic AI can also offer a safety net by identifying findings of interest that might otherwise have been missed, effectively providing a second pair of eyes for radiologists to rely on.

Now, operational AI is rising in popularity with health system leaders. By automating and streamlining repetitive tasks, operational AI tools tend to show faster and higher ROI. It has been used to fundamentally improve patient identification and scheduling, data searches, reporting, and other time-consuming, non-clinical activities across the end-to-end patient imaging process.

What are the critical factors you should consider on your organization’s AI imaging journey? 

• AI-driven imaging solutions must be proven to work clinically and meet requirements for regulatory compliance, security, and privacy. Merge has validated several diagnostic AI applications provided by fully vetted partners. Designed for various body parts and modalities, these are applications are confirmed to work with Merge solutions.
• AI should be standards-based and vendor-neutral (modality, PACS, etc.) to integrate easily into your IT environment. Merge is committed to interoperability —and demands the same of our partners—to ensure your investments are protected over the long term.
• AI technology vendors should be willing to collaborate with you and with each other throughout contracting, deployment, maintenance, support, and renewals. Merge invests in strong business partner relationships for a cohesive experience for our clients throughout their AI journey.

Choice and control in AI adoption

Merge CADstream™
This solution uses complex mathematical algorithms to deliver insightful data visualization and segmentation that helps radiologists characterize abnormalities, access priors, streamline reporting, and ease interventional planning for breast, pelvic, and abdominal MRI studies.

Merge AI Partners
Check the Merge AI Partners catalog to learn about regulatory-cleared AI applications from trusted partners, which have been validated to work with Merge solutions. 

Introducing Merge Imaging Suite: a comprehensive portfolio of Solutions, built by people who think you like, to empower healthcare organizations with a strategic approach toward modernizing their imaging environments.

Merge Imaging Suite provides a broad array of intuitive features thoughtfully designed for imaging clinicians to enjoy a seamless and frictionless workflow experience. These solutions are personalized for them to focus on the velocity and quality of patient care, while enabling tighter collaboration with extended care teams. The result: enhanced clinician satisfaction and retention, helping to drive better patient outcomes.

Merge Imaging Suite also benefits technical functions such as as IT and imaging informatics teams. As a modular, integrated, cloud-native medical imaging platform, the Imaging Suite solutions maximize availability, security, performance, ease of administration, and remote access, all while reducing complexity and cost.

Designed for strategic, phased cloud adoption at a pace you determine, Merge Imaging Suite is purpose-built for helping support healthcare providers’ journey to a modernized, cloud-based enterprise imaging platform. It can help organizations to: 

• Consolidate patient imaging information into a centralized point of access for clinicians and their teams, eliminating data silos and establishing a single source of truth.
• Integrate clinical insights from AI tools, all within current workflows to help clinicians accelerate productivity and improve satisfaction.
• Personalize the reading experience for clinicians so that they can review imaging studies the way they like to and do so more efficiently.
• Utilize multiple real-time collaboration options for better communications between care team members.
• Facilitate the distribution of imaging studies across reading teams, using an assignment engine driven by native AI that learns over time, so that caseloads can be managed and distributed equitably.
• Simplify IT infrastructure with a vendor-neutral, hybrid cloud-native platform.
• Integrate seamlessly with an organization’s existing solutions in a scalable hybrid-cloud infrastructure, to protect investments, ensure continuity, and eliminate downtime.
• Provide robust protection from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats that can result in costly downtime, reputational damage, and even legal action. 

Merge Imaging Suite continues our commitment to provide industry-leading imaging solutions that clients can confidently rely on and are easy to use. Extend to, or swap out, different components of the Imaging Suite at your discretion – and avoid the headaches and hassles of implementing and figuring out new tools. Merge Imaging Suite is a holistic experience to itself, providing maximum flexibility so you only use the components you want, when you need them.

As a transformation partner, we will help you stay ahead of technology trends to address the imaging needs of today and for the future.

Until recently, imaging organizations accumulated technology as on-premises investments, selected to meet individual departmental needs. Over time, this resulted in siloed environments that become notoriously hard to manage – highly fragmented, not interoperable, and difficult to implement necessary patches, upgrades, and integrations. Given the costs of staff, maintenance, and facilities requirements, the need for change is clear.

Adopting a cloud strategy for enterprise imaging offers a variety of antidotes to these problems. However, transitioning from on-premises to cloud-based infrastructure all at once can be disruptive, complex, and intimidating. That’s why Merge offers a best-of-both-worlds hybrid approach: combining on-premises with public cloud (i.e., hybrid cloud) in phased approaches to offer a productive path forward for most healthcare organizations. Every organization’s journey to the cloud is going to be different, depending on their current system footprint, available resources, time horizons, and budget – so it needs to be tailored to each provider’s unique timeline needs.

The Merge team, which is highly experienced and skilled in such initiatives, works with imaging organizations of various sizes and complexities (independent imaging providers, imaging providers, ambulatory care facilities, and integrated health systems) to embark on their cloud journeys.

The benefits of Merge’s hybrid-cloud strategy include:

• Industrial-grade facilities, services, and support, backed by service level agreements.
• Storage for housing massive amounts of historical imaging data, which can be tiered for authorized access.
• Built-in security best practices that include password protection, multi-factor authentication, access control, authentication, encryption, monitoring, and response plans for cyberattacks and data breaches.
• Patches, upgrades, and other maintenance costs and efforts are outsourced, helping to avoid downtime caused by unplanned system outages, potential power outages, or facilities issues.
• Easy remote access. With any internet connection, physicians, care teams, and patients can access imaging data and collaborate between internal and external members – anywhere, at any time, from any device.
• Secure, distributed access to imaging data for patients, ensuring patients can view their information at any time, helping providers meet regulatory requirements and enhance patient satisfaction.
• A pay-as-you-go model that replaces large capital expenditures of on-premise environments (and associated budgeting and procurement processes) with operating expense business models.
• Identify, train, and retain expensive, dedicated IT resources, knowing that Merge effectively provides staff augmentation. 

Merge provides award-winning, market-leading enterprise imaging solutions for radiology and cardiology, backed by over 35+ years of industry expertise, that empower imaging organizations to reimagine their workspaces, create seamless workflows, and make reading images a more enjoyable experience for clinicians.

Visit our website or talk to an enterprise imaging solutions expert to learn more about how the Merge team can help you along on your enterprise imaging journey.

1. “Clinical Research Study: Reducing Chest CT Interpretation Time Using Advanced Lung Nodule Workflow Functionality” 2022 Xie, Y. Sati, M.
2. Merge product performance testing in a simulated clinical production environment
3. “An Intelligent Worklist for Equitable Study Distribution” October 2023. Bagley L., Park S.Y., Weatherbee C., Kis F., Sati M.
4. Merge product performance testing in a simulated clinical production environment
   
5. Solving burnout through teleradiology
6. Enterprise imaging in action
7. “Understanding Patient Experiences, Opinions, and Actions After Viewing Their Own Radiology Images Online” 2022. Norris E.C., Halaska C., Sachs P.B., Lin C-T., Sanfilippo K., Honce J.M.

About Merge
Trusted by 6 of the 10 largest U.S. health systems, Merge by Merative empowers healthcare organizations with advanced medical imaging solutions to enhance workflows, optimize care delivery, and help improve patient outcomes. Merge’s Imaging Suite, built on a cloud-native foundation, provides solutions for Vendor-Neutral Archive (VNA), PACS, Enterprise Imaging Viewing, and Workflow Orchestration. Merge’s portfolio also includes Best in KLAS Cardiology and Hemodynamic Monitoring, and Digital Pathology. Learn more at merative.com/merge.

The information contained in this publication is provided for informational purposes only. While efforts were made to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this publication, it is provided AS IS without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In addition, this information is based on Merative’s product plans and strategy as of the date of this publication, which are subject to change by Merative without notice. Nothing contained in this publication is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, creating any warranties or representations from Merative, or stating or implying that any activities undertaken by you will result in any specific performance results. Merative products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.

Merge imaging solutions are manufactured by Merge Healthcare Incorporated, an affiliate of Merative US, L.P, 900 Walnut Ridge Drive, Hartland, WI, USA 53029