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.
About Nicklaus Children's Hospital, Where Your Child Matters Most ™ (2025)
For 75 years, Nicklaus Children's has stood as a beacon of hope for children and families across the state of Florida and beyond. Nicklaus Children's Hospital is South Florida's #1 nonprofit, freestanding specialty licensed hospital exclusively for children serving close to 70 percent of children in the Miami metropolitan community. In addition, Nicklaus Children's offers care within NCH North Hospital in Naples, Jupiter Medical Center's De George Pediatric Unit and select Baptist Health Hospital pediatric emergency units. The hospital and its network of more of nearly 35 outpatient care locations offer lifesaving care in in Miami-Dade, Broward, Martin, and Palm Beach counties. These outpatient locations include an array of urgent care, pediatric primary care, and subspecialty care centers and are either hospital-based or outpatient locations under Nicklaus Children's Pediatric Specialists, LLC (NCPS). Providing a pipeline of future physicians and groundbreaking research, Nicklaus Children's is an academic and clinical affiliate of Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. Nicklaus Children's is home to centers of excellence including the Helen & Jacob Shaham Cancer & Blood Disorders Institute, the Nicklaus Children's Orthopedics, Sports Health and Spine Institute, Nicklaus Children's Neuroscience Institute and Nicklaus Children's Heart Institute. The 325-bed hospital is renowned for excellence in all aspects of pediatric medicine, with many programs routinely ranked among the nation's best by U.S. News & World Report since 2008. Nicklaus Children's also includes a nonprofit physician practice subsidiary with over 40 specialties, and an ambulatory surgery center.