2010 May

Its a big deal when radiology makes national headlines. And it was a big deal in February when national news media broadcast live the Congressional hearing on controlling radiation dose.

The creation of an integrated enterprise is becoming increasingly important, not only to successfully manage patient care, but to protect the bottom line. Interoperability strategies will have to adhere to accepted medical and communications standards in order to connect systems—including radiology—and create a seamlessly integrated enterprise.

The proliferation of portable, hand-carried and now even pocket-sized microportable ultrasound devices has opened the door to a new mindset for physicians. Instead of moving a patient to the radiology department or rolling imaging equipment to the bedside, a physician can grab a laptop-size scanning system or reach into his lab coat, turn on a smartphone-sized ultrasound scanner and begin scanning anywhere care is administered. Portable ultrasound systems are becoming a part, too, of the overall physical exam a visual stethoscope of sorts to immediately peer into a patient to screen or search for underlying issues.

Like much of healthcare, radiology is a state of flux. From reimbursement cuts to adopting EMRs, day-to-day operations are being transformed. Dictation software is evolving in the radiology field as natural language processing (NLP) is being developed to harness content from dictated, free text into a manageable report that can be used in radiology.