2009 January

Radiologys showcase conferencethe 94th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) was a show of great anticipation, but uneasiness seemed to fade as the sessions and halls filled with attendees.

While speech recognition technology has proven its ability to reduce transcription costs and improve report turn-around times, these benefits are clearly becoming old news. Healthcare facilities now demand front-end and back-end systems that do more than just replace dictation and transcription, offering add-on tools that help with overall workflow in a format that is easy to use. After all, the key to speech recognitions success is its adoption among radiologists and physicians.

Deploying PACS capabilities beyond a single radiology facility provides the opportunity of extending the reach of diagnostic imaging to a greatly expanded customer base. The benefits to imaging center practitioners are straightforwardincreased market share and greater efficiencies from existing personnel.

As breast imaging centers and departments make the transition to digital imaging, department heads, IT professionals and administrators struggle to identify how to maximize all of their imaging modalities and read and distribute images, while increasing patient throughput for financial stability. With a move to digital mammography, the brass ring that everyone seems to be reaching for, is a combination of efficiency and productivity gains, controlled costs and accelerated, quality patient care.

Everything old is new again. Flat-panel-based digital radiography is seeing a resurgence, fueled by the drive to back-to-basics, core technologies in this ultra-tight economic and reimbursement climate. The need to drive greater productivity and throughput for radiologys workhorse has never been greater.