The world of medical imaging is evolving rapidly – given advances in technology and evolution of medical imaging practices and standards worldwide. Here are the potential innovations in the healthcare informatics space which we would like to see at RSNA this year:
Effective integration of Clinical Decision Support (CDS) in the Radiology
Tools and technologies which can anticipate a radiologist’s requirements when a case is brought up for review. Some of the points where clinical decision will make a meaningful impact on radiologist include:
- Load relevant patient history e.g.,
- Pathology results
- Surgeries/ procedures
- Disease conditions - HIV
- Results of the physical exam
- Other pertinent information e.g., malpractice suits
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- Identify any relevant prior studies, orders and reports and make them available in real-time
- Based on a combination of the relevant clinical parameters, display a customized hanging protocol with embedded 3D applications that are launched automatically; which is relevant to the current patient
Optimization of radiation dose to achieve high-quality images with minimal dose given to the patient
- Workflow optimizations which identify the minimum radiation dose prior to the scan being conducted
- Usage of motion detector technologies (typically used in a gaming environment, e.g. Microsoft Kinect) to calculate the volume of a patient’s body to optimize the radiation dose required to obtain high-quality images for a specific region of the anatomy based on the amount of soft tissue present
Significant advancements in the usage of mobile phones and tablets for supporting activities in the radiology workflow which show an understanding of the practical use cases such as:
- Demonstrations of HTML5-based viewers and mobile image viewing applications
- Enabling referring Physicians to show images to patients at the point of care
- Allowing radiologists to explain an interventional procedure to patients at the point of care
Effective solutions for using cloud-based services in healthcare. Specifically, solutions which address problems such as:
- Consistent browser support
- Common UI and icons
- Addressing problems with integrating data from CDs
- Life cycle management of data on cloud-based systems
- Disaster recovery mechanisms in case the cloud goes down or becomes inaccessible due to network failures or natural disaster
Practical solutions to patient health records (PHRs) in radiology by patients
- Ability of patients to use radiology images in PHRs for managing their healthcare records