Stage 2 meaningful use guidelines for electronic medical records (EMRs) suggest use of clinical decision support (CDS) software to help clinicians choose appropriate labs, diagnoses, therapies and imaging exams. A draft policy to replace the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula now being considered by a joint U.S. Senate Finance and House Committee on Ways and Means Committee might make this suggestion a requirement in the future. The draft policy would deny Medicare payment for exams if the ordering physician did not consult appropriate use criteria (AUC) and require prior authorization for outlier providers.
Cianna Medical Inc., a women’s health company, conducted a large, retrospective study evaluating the safety and efficacy of the Savi breast brachytherapy applicator. Researchers reported favorably low recurrence rates, high rates of survival and excellent cosmetic outcomes. Savi is a strut-based applicator that delivers a form of accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI), a five-day course of targeted radiation for early-stage breast cancer.
The push for healthcare to be digitally transformed and paper-free means having access to electronic medical records anytime/anywhere. This effort amplified, has left many cardiology departments struggling to catch up. According to the Administration on Aging people 65+ represented 12.4 percent of the population in the year 2000, but are expected to grow to be 19 percent of the population by 2030. The increase in longevity-on top of advances in medications, less invasive treatments and diagnostic testing will greatly increase demand for cardiology.
Fujifilm’s APERTO Lucent is a 0.4T mid-field, open MRI system addressing today’s capability and image quality needs ...
ScImage Inc. deployed its Picom365 imaging workflow solution at Metro Imaging, a multi-site high volume radiology practice based in St. Louis. The Picom365 solution balances on-premises end-to-end radiology workflow and cloud based VNA with an embedded universal viewing image portal.
Richard Wolf Medical Instruments Corp. and Maquet launched a non-exclusive sales partnership in the United States to offer OR integration solutions in the endoscopy market.
SPONSORED CONTENT — Fujifilm’s latest CT technology brings exceptional image quality to a compact and user- and patient ...
My generation has seen the rise of a frightening kind of STD, one that was unflinchingly lethal early on and since has been unrelenting, if survivable. Today AIDS is managed, not cured, the lethality of its cause, HIV, held at bay with a cocktail of daily medications. But now there is hope for a cure: radioimmunotherapy (RIT) promises the destruction of HIV-infected cells and the means to verify it.
SPONSORED CONTENT — Fujifilm’s latest CT technology brings exceptional image quality to a compact and user- and patient ...
GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company, developed features on the Logiq S8 general imaging ultrasound system. The innovations allow for enhanced image quality and streamlined workflow for healthcare providers, and help shorten exam times for patients. GE presented the advancements at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2013 conference.
The Center for Tomography Research Laboratory (CTECH Labs) introduced its latest technology in brain scanning at the 6th International IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Conference on Neural Engineering, San Diego, Calif., Nov. 7, 2013.
Medical Insight’s EasyViz was selected in a robust program initiated in Denmark where improved efficiency in patient care is being demonstrated. Two regions in Denmark have realized their strategic vision using a vendor neutral archive (VNA) paired with EasyViz, an enterprise diagnostic viewer for radiologists, clinicians, radiographers and more. Radiologists and clinicians in 14 hospitals can access clinical exams in seconds directly or from any Internet application. This eliminates the need and time for radiologists and clinicians to take geography, IT infrastructure and workstations into consideration.
SPONSORED CONTENT — EnsightTM 2.0 is the newest version of Enlitic’s data standardization software framework. Ensight is ...
Initial acceptance test results of ProTom International Inc.'s Radiance 330 Proton Therapy System are exceeding expectations of medical physicists charged with clinical commissioning at the McLaren Proton Therapy Center (MPTC) in Flint, Michigan.
Carestream's Vue family includes RIS/PACS/archiving as well as vendor-neutral archives, physician and patient portals ...
Blackford Analysis, a provider of software products that accelerate comparison of medical images, introduced its products to the Middle Eastern market at the Arab Health Congress 2014 in Dubai. Designed to be integrated directly into any image viewer, such as a PACS, Advanced Visualization Viewer or Universal Viewer, Blackford Analysis’ products work within existing systems to enable instant comparison of multiple image studies.
Did you know that approximately one-third of all the data in world is created by the healthcare industry and that ...
Looking for signs of cancer in the mammogram of a dense breast is like looking for a polar bear in a snowstorm. Because they absorb X-rays, glandular and fibrous tissue appear white, as do microcalcifications, lumps and other lesions that may indicate breast cancer.
The practice of breast imaging and screening in women at risk for breast cancer is evolving as new imaging modalities are incorporated and researchers continue to study the implications of dense breast tissue in patients. At the 2013 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago, there were several sessions highlighting trials and studies that brought breast density and cancer detection to the forefront.
SPONSORED CONTENT — EnsightTM 2.0 is the newest version of Enlitic’s data standardization software framework. Ensight is ...
Several industries have used cloud solutions for many years, but cloud computing only recently started to be used in healthcare. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), cloud computing is defined as “a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”1 As more and more healthcare organizations (HCOs) adopt electronic medical records (EMRs), the cloud database has offered an efficient solution for image sharing, particularly in radiology where it is bridging the gap between referring physicians and radiologists.
Radiation dose continues to rise as the number of computed tomography (CT), nuclear, angiography and fluoroscopy examinations grow, leading to a greater risk of patient overexposure to radiation. Healthcare providers must reinforce their efforts to monitor and visualize dose levels from radiology examinations to enhance patient safety and meet new regulatory demands. There also is a need to justify and optimize the usage of radiation dose to find a balance between safer practice, image quality and lower dose — all for the benefit of the patient. Implementing tools for automatic and continuous follow up of radiation dose is at the forefront of meeting these challenges.
The Elsie and Robert Pierson Radiation Oncology Center is a part of City of Hope National Medical Center — a dedicated, National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated comprehensive cancer center located in Duarte, Calif.
The advent of hybrid PET/MR in 2011 brought the promise of vastly improved imaging technology in the form of a new modality that combined whole body positron emission tomography (PET) with magnetic resonance (MR) technology. Following two years of using PET/MR, we are seeing clinical benefits with this system at the University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center in Cleveland.
What was once diagnostic imaging is on track to becoming much more. Radiology is on the verge of a new era in which its focus goes beyond the traditional gatekeeper role, directing the earliest steps in patient management to one that adjusts the direction of care throughout the management of a patient.
Physicians have used radiation in medicine for more than a century. The use of radiation in diagnostic imaging, including computed tomography (CT), fluoroscopy, angiography, mammography, computed radiography (CR) and digital radiography (DR), as well as in nuclear medicine, has aided greatly in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases.