Whether you've been to RSNA only once, just heard about it or are getting your 25-year pin this year, this annual event is just that, an event. RSNA is all about making connections - with colleagues, friends and even competitors. And it is now about connecting your imaging devices and information systems, too.
Across the educational sessions, exhibit show floor and new applications at infoRAD, images from myriad specialties, often enhanced via 3D or CAD, are no longer limited by time or place. PACS, often hand-in-hand with RIS, are shuttling complex and diagnostically significant images and reports with greater ease to where ever they need to be. Tightly integrated RIS-PACS (on a single desktop with a single login) yields department workflow advantages as well with improved efficiency, decreased delays between study request and final report and more access to information throughout the enterprise. Around the floor this year, solutions are finally more simplified and affordable. The variety is still a bit overwhelming but systems optimized for facility size and procedure volume are finally emerging - with better, more customizable user interfaces, performance and functionality of diagnostic and review workstations.
To save yourself some legwork in checking out the new products for all modalities and IT offerings on the floor, let your fingers do the walking "through the exhibit show floor" prior to show time. Our RSNA Preview 2004 starts on page 20 and stretches to page 62, detailing 15 categories of products and enhancements debuting and being showcased. An infoRad and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) update appears on page 28.
And connecting disciplines is the thing molecular imaging is made of, too. This evolving field is really making progress - and bringing the course of cancer and cardiac and neurologic disease diagnosis and therapy with it. It is no secret that molecular imaging offers great potential to improve outcomes, more accurately charting treatment and therapy and reduce healthcare costs. Our special section this month provides some insight from nuclear medicine guru Edward Coleman, MD, (page 66) on molecular imaging's progress and future, as well as solutions for managing, distributing, navigating and storing super-sized molecular imaging studies and where targeted radiopharmaceuticals and PET/CT and SPECT/CT scanners are headed.
See you at RSNA!
Mary joined TriMed Media in 2003. She was the founding editor and editorial director of Health Imaging, Cardiovascular Business, Molecular Imaging Insight and CMIO, now known as Clinical Innovation + Technology. Prior to TriMed, Mary was the editorial director of HealthTech Publishing Company, where she had worked since 1991. While there, she oversaw four magazines and related online media, and piloted the launch of two magazines and websites. Mary holds a master’s in journalism from Syracuse University. She lives in East Greenwich, R.I., and when not working, she is usually running around after her family, taking photos or cooking.