Delivering key images, reports and patient data to the point of diagnosis and care is the Holy Grail of radiology and many other specialties today. Having the correct information for the patient at the right time for the radiologist or referring physician starts with having the right viewer.

Eight years ago, Women’s Imaging Associates in Birmingham, Ala., was a small, well-respected mammography practice serving six OB/GYN offices in its area. Today, having embraced a 100% telemedicine model, its three fulltime breast specialists read images for 22 client facilities scattered around the U.S.—not only OB offices but also outpatient imaging centers and hospitals large and small. 

Being a radiologist today can feel a bit like being on the Starship Enterprise: you have all these Star-Trek-like tools at your disposal – devices and applications with the ability to produce incredibly sophisticated digital images and insights that we couldn’t have imagined even twenty years ago. 

The imaging staff at Androscoggin Valley Hospital (AVH) in Berlin, N.H., knew the time had come to up their x-ray game when their 11-year-old computed radiography (CR) system began needing new imaging plates and maintenance. What they didn’t know was how fast, easy and cost-effective it could be to upgrade to superior digital radiography (DR) just by investing in the right DR detectors. In 2015, following comprehensive research, that’s exactly what they did.

Holland, 1931. Bernard George Ziedses des Plantes worked hard on the world’s first tomosynthesis machine, publishing a paper on the device he called a Planigraph. His clinical results were presented at the 1931 meeting of the Netherlands Society of Electrology and Radiology in Amsterdam, and the first commercial device was produced just a few years later.

The employees of Scottsdale Medical Imaging (SMIL), an imaging practice with 14 locations throughout the state of Arizona, recently faced a dilemma many other providers in the industry have encountered; they had to choose a vendor to lead their conversion from computed radiography (CR) to digital radiography (DR).

The imaging division at John Muir Health in California’s Contra Costa County has been supplying topnotch image-handling capabilities to end users located across the system’s sprawling family tree—three hospitals, seven outpatient imaging centers, a 1,000-plus physician network and a dozen or so sites providing outpatient, urgent-care and surgery services—since 2001. That’s when Sectra PACS entered the picture for the Walnut Creek-based organization.

In our complex, multi-site tertiary care imaging department our challenge is to gather data about our imaging operations and create insights from it to help us make better business decisions, streamline operations and optimize access to care.