RSNA 2012 Preview: How To Achieve 50 Percent Patient Engagement

November 15, 2012 by Leave a comment

Cristine Kao

Cristine Kao, Global Marketing Manager, Healthcare IT, Carestream

In October, the healthcare news headlines lit up with concerns about patient engagement measures. Like this story from FierceHealthIT, “CMS official: We might revisit Meaningful Use patient engagement rules, “ which indicated that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will reconsider its requirements for patient engagement in Meaningful Use Stage 2 if complying proves too onerous for care providers.

Many providers feel that requiring five percent of patients to view, download or transmit healthcare information to a third-party was an aggressive target and outside a physician’s control. Patient access and patient action are decidedly different.

Ironically, as this debate reignited, our MyVue* Patient Portal trade trial with Houston Medical Imaging had three months of engagement data coming in. This timely trade trial, which allowed patients to access and share their imaging results online, gave us our own barometer on how achievable the Stage 2 patient engagement measures are.

In Houston Medical Imaging’s three locations, thirty percent of the patients they saw in that three month period signed up for this service. The facility also serves out of state patients and received phone calls from people requesting prints of their images from previous exams mailed to them. They’ve been able to share their imaging studies through the patient portal. All told, Houston Medical Imaging’s staff registered 2,662 patients. But even more important—particularly if you compare it to the 5 percent measure that has many providers concerned—more than 50 percent of patients actually log-on, view, download or share.

From the preliminary data from this trade trial, the current CMS measures are certainly achievable with the right technology to facilitate engagement. The technology must intuitive for patients. It must be accessible from a variety of Web-browser enabled devices. It has to provide value.

Here’s a quick and fun overview of how you can engage your patients with MyVue:

I’ll be at RSNA discussing the challenges and opportunities of patient engagement with other physicians and imaging directors. I hope to see you there in booth #2636 or stop by my session in RSNA’s Mobile Connect Area: “Easy, Secure Image Access and Sharing” on Monday, November 26 at 12:10 p.m.

Editor’s note: Book a MyVue demo appointment at RSNA 2012 online or stop by booth #2636 to speak with our application specialists about patient engagement strategies.

*Available February 2013

Filed under Health IT, Innovation, Meaningful Use, mobile image access, Patients First, RSNA 2012, Tradeshows, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Tube & Grid Alignment Necessary to Improve Portable Image Quality

October 31, 2012 by Leave a comment

Xiaohui Wang, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate
Clinical Applications Research, Carestream

Grid usage in portable radiography is often sporadic and inconsistent. This causes greater variability in image quality, and a greater number of radiographs of poorer quality than those captured in the radiology department being delivered for interpretation.

From the perspective of the radiographic technologist, using grids for portable exams involves a variety of time-consuming workflow implications:

  • Attaching and detaching the add-on grids to the X-ray detector.
  • The stringent requirements to properly position and align the X-ray source relative to the detector behind the patient to avoid grid cutoff.
  • The increased probability that repeated exposures will be required due to grid-cutoff artifact.

In addition, there is the misperception that grids are not required in digital radiography because increasing the exposure can overcome the scatter-noise level, and that image processing adjustments, such as window and level manipulations, can sufficiently compensate for the quality losses that are introduced by scattered radiation. With all of these considerations in mind, there would seem to be little motivation for the technologists to use grids in portable digital radiography.

However, anti-scatter grids improve radiography image quality, and the benefit of grid usage can be realized in digital radiography with less exposure technique increments.  These benefits can be achieved without disrupting technologist workflow with the Tube and Grid Alignment (TGA) System for the DRX-Revolution Mobile X-ray System. Our TGA provides easy and intuitive guidance for X-ray-source alignment relative to the grid-detector to achieve consistent and optimal image quality–no additional operational steps are required.

Staff members at Hamilton General Hospital have experienced how the optional Tube and Grid Alignment System for the CARESTREAM DRX-Revolution has impacted technologist efficiency and image quality:

DOWNLOAD our tube and grid whitepaper to learn more. 

Filed under Digital Radiography, Innovation, Mobile X-Ray, Radiology, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

National Institutes of Health Lesion Management Presentations at RSNA 12

October 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

Cristine Kao

Cristine Kao, Global Marketing Manager, Healthcare IT, Carestream

Precise lesion measurement is critical for reliable evaluation of metastatic disease and faster assessment of patient response to cancer treatment. This topic is heavily featured at RSNA next month, where National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers are giving three RSNA presentations that involve use of Carestream’s new lesion management application:

  • “Comparison of Tumor Size Measurements in Simulated Metastatic Lesions on Serial CT in a Phantom”   (Tuesday, Nov. 27, 11:20-11:30 AM, Room S104A)
  • “Semi-Automatic Target Lesion Localization, Segmentation and RECIST Measurements on Serial CT Studies” (Tuesday, Nov. 27, 11:30-11:40 AM, Room S402AB)
  • “Optimizing Efficiency and Consistency of Metastatic Disease Treatment Evaluation Using CT Semi-Automated Lesion Analysis” (Tuesday, Nov. 27, 11:40-11:50 AM, Room S104A)

For radiologists and oncologists, simple quantitative comparisons of historical exams – especially those imported from disparate PACS or modalities – have been a challenge in a traditional PACS, causing many to turn to dedicated workstations.

Our new lesion management application, used by NIH in their research studies, is an embedded application in Vue PACS that enhances assessment of oncology patients by:

  • Providing lesion management as a native PACS clinical tool
  • Accepting prior exam results as baseline images from 3rd-party PACS and from numerous modalities
  • Helping boost  radiologist productivity by simplifying segmentation and analysis
  • Delivering volumetric data with PowerViewer to simplify the comparison process between different data sets
  • Supporting oncology follow up with bookmarking and tracking of general anatomy over time
  • Helping reduce the cost associated with dedicated Workstations

If you are at RSNA the NIH presentations shouldn’t be missed.

Unable to attend NIH’s lesion management presentations at RSNA?  You can see a quick video demonstration below that illustrates how the tool is designed to help to provide faster localization, measurements, and follow-up that could help minimize subjective variation and enhance consistency.

How would consistent, standardized oncology image reporting impact communication and collaboration between physicians at your facility? 

Filed under Health IT, Innovation, PACS, Patients First, RSNA 2012, Tradeshows, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

UZ Brussel Hospital Goes Fully Digital with DRX

September 6, 2012 by Leave a comment

Wim Op de Beeck, Major Accounts Manager, Carestream Belgium

A complete change in imaging strategy for a teaching and research hospital with nearly 800 beds and 200,000 radiology patients a year is no small feat.

For the Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel (UZ Brussel) Hospital,  its digital transition began a decade ago with the addition of a CARESTREAM PACS. Next came the conversion of existing Siemens and Philips mobile units with CARESTREAM DRX-Mobile Retrofit Kits. And soon the hospital’s final digital piece will be place as part of construction of a new Emergency Department—two DRX-1 Systems becoming mobile x-ray rooms, going wherever imaging is required.

Digital has dramatically changed technologist productivity and patient care. Radiographers previously took 25-30 phosphor plates with them on intensive care round for chest x-rays. Now they take 1 wireless DR detector and doctors can see the results immediately at the bedside to speed treatment.

The flat panel detector with higher DQE allows clinicians to take images at a lower dose than with phosphor plates and helps guide procedures like positioning of catheters, inter-aortic balloon pumps and line control.

Hear first hand from the staff at UZ Brussel about their digital radiography conversion:

UZ Brussel anticipates their capacity will double with the DRX-1 Systems – treating an estimated 300 to 400 patients – per day when the Emergency Room is complete.

If you’re thinking of making the conversion to digital – here are three takeaways from UZ Brussel’s experience:

  1. You don’t have to go digital all at once – select compatible, scalable components that can meet today’s needs and grow with you.
  1. Protect your investment – retrofit kits can allow you to convert your existing equipment in lieu of a complete replacement.
  1. Find a technology partner you can trust – look for a vendor partner who understands your challenges and has a vision to meet your evolving needs.

Has your rad department gone digital? What advice do you have for a department about the make the transition? 

Filed under Mobile X-Ray, Radiology, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

The Stage 2 Opportunity for Zero-footprint Universal Image Viewers

August 31, 2012 by Leave a comment

Cristine Kao

Cristine Kao, Global Marketing Manager, Healthcare IT, Carestream

As the radiology community makes sense of the final stage 2 meaningful use rules many provider CIOs, CMIO and radiology department heads are looking closer at their CEHRT image access strategy.

In the final rule, CMS set a threshold of 10 percent or more of imaging results accessible through certified EHR technology, with exclusions for providers who order less than 100 scans in an EHR reporting period, and for providers who do not have access to electronic images.

CMS also clarified that images do not have to be stored in the EHR, but there must be a link to where the image and information can be accessed.  This important measure provides easy access to patient images to reduce the ordering of duplicate, unnecessary exams, minimize exposure to radiation and help contain healthcare costs.

To prepare for compliance with stage 2, providers will now need to identify how they will merge EMR systems with RIS and PACS to enable image sharing and collaboration for improved care coordination.

One avenue to satisfy meaningful use criterion is a zero-footprint viewer than can serve as an intermediary between the RIS/PACS and EMR. To fulfill this potential, the viewer must be available remotely to enhance physician access to all PACS images. It must allow embedding in an EMR system to provide access to reports and images alongside the patient’s other medical information. Moreover, the viewer must provide access to DICOM, as well as non-DICOM image related data, such as JPEG images and PDF documents. The viewer’s use must not be restricted to a single IT-system or facility, but offer extensive compatibility to provide secure access to images across and beyond the enterprise—for physicians and patients alike.

Carestream’s Vue Motion vendor-neutral imaging viewer can be embedded in EMR and HIS portals to access images contained in the PACS, thereby image-enabling the enterprise. The viewer can be launched without calling up a separate application or logging into another system. Alternatively, it can be launched in a separate window without requiring a separate log-in, using a URL from within the system.  It leverages the PACS server to do the vast majority of the rendering, thereby significantly reducing the volume of data to be transmitted. And, because rendering is done on the server side, there are no data storage requirements on the zero-footprint side.  Features like the display of current and prior images side-by-side and the ability for clinicians to input order notes to the exam can facilitate better collaboration between referring physicians, specialists and other clinicians. Here’s a quick demo of how our Vue Motion works:

Are you evaluating zero-footprint image viewers as a piece of your strategy for stage 2? 

Filed under Health IT, Innovation, Meaningful Use, mobile image access, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Video: AHRA Attendees Finally Get Their Hands on the DRX-Revolution

August 20, 2012 by Leave a comment

Don Thompson, Digital Capture Solutions, Marketing Manager, Carestream U.S. & Canada

Don Thompson, Digital Capture Solutions, Marketing Manager, Carestream U.S. & Canada

At last year’s annual meeting of the Association for Medical Imaging Management, radiology administrators had an opportunity to view a quick presentation and provide feedback on Carestream’s prototype DRX-Revolution Mobile X-ray System, which was not yet commercially available. A lot has changed in a year. The DRX-Revolution is now commercially available, and attendees at last week’s AHRA 2012 meeting finally got to see the product firsthand to see if our design addressed the needs users voiced:

Mobility – “There is a common fear of running into someone or something with a portable x-ray machine. The big column in the middle of the unit obstructs an operator’s view.”

  • So easy to maneuver, you can make a 360-degree turn while steering it with just one hand.
  • An automatic collapsible column shrinks the system to just over four feet tall, giving you complete visibility when moving the system to any location.
  • A long tubehead reach gives you easy access to the patient in crowded rooms.

Image Quality – “We discovered technologists didn’t use the grid for mobile imaging because of the challenging workflow parameters.”

  • Unique Tube & Grid Alignment System optimizes image quality and encourages grid use.
  • DRX-Revolution offers prior image review including techniques and exposure history by using query/retrieve from PACS.
  • Optional tube and line visualization software instantly verifies placement of tubes and peripherally inserted central catheter lines in seriously ill or injured patients.

Workflow: “Radiologic technologists wear gloves. They bag detectors when going to patient beds to avoid the transfer of disease. They clean their equipment with sanitizing wipes. But the mobile x-ray imaging unit they drive does not carry any of these tools.”

  • Touch screen monitors at both the tube head and main display provide two work zones just like a stationary DR room.
  • Position quickly with the lightweight, wireless DRX detector that eliminates trip hazards and reduces the spread of infection.
  • On-board bins keep gloves, sanitizer, paperwork, markers and lockable detector storage at your fingertips.

The imaging managers from Health First in Florida and Seton Highland Lakes Hospital in Texas both took test drives of the DRX-Revolution at the show and were kind enough to offer insight into portable imaging at their facilities, as well as their impression of the DRX-Revolution:

Did you take the DRX-Revolution for a test drive at AHRA? What did you think? 

Filed under AHRA 2012, Digital Radiography, Innovation, Mobile X-Ray, Radiology, Tradeshows, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bedside Imaging at San Antonio’s University Hospital

July 19, 2012 by Leave a comment

Andy Mendoza

Andy Mendoza, Medical Sales, Carestream

Living in Helotes, Texas – a suburb of San Antonio – I, like many residents, have sense of pride about the hospitals in our area.  U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of “best hospitals” for 52 U.S. metropolitan areas, featured five San Antonio hospitals, placing University Hospital  at #1 and ranked nationally. We can feel good about the care available to us in this area.

On Friday, San Antonio’s local news station, KENS 5, took a look at new bedside imaging technology at University Hospital that is speeding the radiology process and allowing radiologists and physicians to make faster diagnosis. [ Click the Image Below to View]

Click to ViewI worked closely with the hospital on their decision to invest in this Carestream DRX-Revolution Mobile X-Ray System.  As KENS 5 reported, with 12 floors to tackle on rounds, 140 patient x-rays per day and more than 4,000 images a month, the hospital needed a portable unit that was easy to transport and could transmit images in seconds for real-time decisions.

It was nice to see medical imaging getting some mainstream attention. University Hospital’s director of radiology Rick Pena said it best: “When you have good image quality, you feel good about the diagnostics that you provide.”

As a member of the local community, I also hope stories like these make us feel good about the caliber of care available to us in San Antonio.

What role does bedside imaging play in your department’s approach to patient care? 

Attending AHRA 2012 in August? Schedule a DRX-Revolution test drive.

Filed under Customer Spotlight, Digital Radiography, Mobile X-Ray, Videos, X-Factor Customers Tagged with , , , ,

Spire Healthcare Gives Clinicians On-Demand Access to Imaging Data

June 26, 2012 by Leave a comment

Robert Ashby, Carestream

Robert Ashby, European Communications Manager, Carestream Health

The IT director and Imaging Manager at the UK’s second largest private healthcare provider, Spire Healthcare, had an interesting challenge. How do you use technology to provide better service for both patients and referring physicians, who have a choice of where to go for care, when your 37 hospitals are on different PACS platforms?

To differentiate their services, Spire sought a secure, PACS and archive-agnostic image viewer that would be accessible from almost any device—predominantly iPads and other tablets—running a Web browser with no local installation or download.

Since January, Spire has been using Carestream’s Vue Motion viewer to allow radiologists and referring physicians to see PACS images from all 37 sites in the Spire network—on the way to the operating room, at the patient bedside or even from home.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Stephen Hayward, IT Director, Andrew Milne, Imaging Manager, and Dr. Qaiser Malik, Consultant Radiologist, to talk about their experience with Carestream Vue Motion:

Three professionals with different views on the value of freeing images from the PACS workstation.

IT Director, Stephen Hayward

“There is certainly a huge future in mobile health. Having access to care records and reports on a mobile device at the clinician’s finger tips will be a great boom going forward.”

Imaging Manager, Andrew Milne

“Our consultants can access the system remotely, download, and print without any interaction with my staff. This reduces the traffic into the imaging department and makes our service much more efficient. Staff is free to deal with other matters directly involving patient care.”

Consulting Radiologist, Dr. Qaiser Malik

“The clinician may come across a report and he may want to discuss it with me when I may not actually be there.  I can log in to the system wherever I am.  He can log in from the hospital and we can both look at the same images at the same time.”

At UKRC this week? Come see Vue Motion in stand 99. 

Filed under Customer Spotlight, Health IT, mobile image access, PACS, Tradeshows, UKRC 2012, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hamilton General Hospital Takes the DRX-Revolution for a Test Drive

June 21, 2012 by 1 Comment

Glen Nicholson

Glen Nicholson, Medical Sales, Carestream Canada

At the beginning of the year I posed an interesting question to Cheryl Malcolmson, RT (R), Manager, Diagnostic Imaging, Hamilton General Hospital, Hamilton, Canada:

“Can I interest you in a test drive?”

No, I wasn’t selling her a Volvo. But I was offering her facility the opportunity to be a  trade trial site for the CARESTREAM DRX-Revolution Mobile X-Ray System.

Bedside diagnostic imaging has several frustrating challenges ranging from maneuverability to positioning and alignment. Carestream engineering teams developed the first mobile DR system designed “from the ground up” with technologist workflow in mind.  Now we needed to see if we got it right and that required a system test drive.

Hamilton General Hospital is a leading healthcare provider, not only for the downtown community of Hamilton, but for the entire South Central Ontario region. It is recognized as a regional centre of excellence in cardiovascular care, neurosciences, trauma and burn treatment, making it an ideal site for our trade trial – a provider where mobile x-ray systems are an essential tool in treating what are often the sickest of patients – those confined to bed and in need of urgent care.  Cheryl agreed to be a test site for the DRX-Revolution and the trade trial is now complete.

Has the DRX-Revolution redefined mobile x-ray? I’ll let Cheryl and her team share their experience with you:

I’ve been anxiously waiting for this system to hit hospital hallways because I know what a difference it will make in technologist productivity and satisfaction. Hearing a Hamilton technologist comment:

“Really nice images on a system that is easy to drive — just like a lawn mower…”


Means a true x-ray room on wheels is now a reality.

Thanks so much to Cheryl and her team at Hamilton Hospital for putting the DRX-Revolution through the paces in the trial.

Have you taken a test drive of our DRX-Revolution at RSNA or another event? What did you think? 

Filed under Digital Radiography, Innovation, mobile image access, Mobile X-Ray, Radiology, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

SIIM 2012 Hot Topics – Vendor Neutral Archiving and Imaging Sharing

June 11, 2012 by Leave a comment

The proliferation of hospital consolidations as well as facility integration projects supporting HIE and ACO efforts made vendor neutral archiving and image access for referring physicians and patients hot topics at last week’s SIIM conference.

Enterprise Archiving

The discussion at SIIM went beyond the primary need to consolidate islands of storage. Healthcare providers’ needs have evolved. Next-generation archives need to support a wide range of architectures from departmental and multi-site to regional and national medical archive projects, and they must:

  • Collect data beyond imaging exams. Labs, pathology data, video files and JPEG images must combine to create a cohesive patient portfolio.
  • Connect existing platforms to present a single patient worklist without migrating existing archives.
  • Balance the clinical need for information over time and the desire to achieve the lowest storage costs possible with user-defined rules.
  • Provide the patient’s clinical record via the Web or existing EMR/HIS virtually anytime, anywhere – no mater where images and data originate or are stored.

Carestream’s Jeff Fleming highlights the interest in new approaches to enterprise archiving and Carestream’s experience with VNA:


An April 2012 InMedica research report recently highlighted Carestream’s position as the number two player (by study volume) in vendor neutral archiving with more than 2 petabytes of managed data and 80 million studies managed at 10 data centers.

Image Sharing

The vendor neutral archive plays a critical role in the future of image sharing. Ubiquitous image exchange, particularly when you extend beyond the radiology point of view to referring physicians and patients, requires a true VNA foundation and a zero-footprint viewer that can be embedded into EMR systems to become a reality.

Carestream’s Neville Skudowitz presented at SIIM 2012 on Carestream’s approach to commercial products for image sharing:

This vendor session launched a pointed Q&A session about the importance of vendor support for standards and protocols such as HL7, DICOM, non-DICOM, IHE (including XDS, XDS-i) and WADO.

What hot issues or technology caught your attention at SIIM 2012? 

Filed under Health IT, Health Reform, Innovation, mobile image access, SIIM 2012, Teleradiology, Videos Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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