In This Newsletter
CEO Update
A Busy and Eventful 2010
2010 has been an eventful year in COMRAD with many highlights and a few significant challenges, the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch being the major one. One of the highlights without doubt was the support and good wishes we received in the aftermath of the earthquake and the manner our staff handled this stressful and frightening event. However, we are getting over it and to show you we are we have included a few photos of how Christchurch is getting into the Christmas spirit.
Highlights
Other Highlights have included the development of many new features in the COMRAD application, rolling out new Jasmine releases of COMRAD (see below for an update), new clients joining COMRAD and the recruitment of new and experienced talent into the business.
COMRAD Expands into South Australia and Australian Public Hospitals
Early in the New Year COMRAD will achieve two firsts. We will install COMRAD with our first client in South Australia and into our first public hospital in Ballarat, Victoria. While many of our clients use COMRAD for hospital work, Ballarat Hospital is the first public hospital that COMRAD is working with directly. This builds on the hospital clients we have in NZ and broadens our base for further expansion in the future.
RSNA
Like many of you we had one of our team (Lanne Relland our Chief Technology Officer) attend RSNA this year. We visit every year to see the latest developments and to make sure COMRAD keeps current. Lanne reported that RSNA was busier than in the last couple of years and that radiologists’ reporting was a major theme this year. This aligns well with our Product Roadmap as we are working on a new reporting intuitive which we will be releasing in the second half of 2011.
Happy Christmas and New Year
On behalf of the COMRAD Board and staff we thank you for your continuing support and wish you and your families a happy Christmas and New year.
Christmas Angels in the Cathedral
Christmas Cheer in Christchurch
Downtown Christchurch
Paul Claridge
Chief Executive
Radiology Insider
iPads and SmartPhones in Radiology
Everyone in the radiology community is getting excited over the potential use of devices like Apple’s iPad and smartphones like Apple’s iPhone in radiology.
Who will use these devices?
Everyone… radiologists, other medical specialists, general practitioners, trainees, students (school, tertiary), patients, any referrer, any allied medical professional (radiographer, nurse, physiotherapist), veterinarian, other!
Where will these devices be used?
Everywhere… locally, regionally, nationally, internationally
In what kind of Locations?
Anywhere… A&E (quickly portable), operating theatre (portable; easy to sterile cover), ward (handy for patients and staff; can be passed around quickly to members of ward rounds), clinic (instant results), GP Practice (referrer and patient), the home (inside/outside), teaching institutions, place of sport/recreation (golf/skiing), holiday (local/overseas).
What for?
Everything… creating/receiving reports (even speech recognition possible with built in microphone and speaker), reviewing images, remote diagnostic opinion (critical emergencies for gross pathology > ‘better than nothing’), instruction/checklists, learning, accessing reference sites, social networking with colleagues (Twitter, Facebook, Blogs)… and relaxing with music and games!
Among the usability constraints are the small monitor sizes, limited processing power, and any issues with local network support or bandwidth speeds. But basically these are incredibly mobile and handy gadgets.
When it comes to viewing images, the technical and medico-legal ‘boundaries’ are not yet clear. On both types of device, the viewing monitor is small and without calibration… so these devices may not be suitable for primary interpretation.
Because of its size, the iPad is clearly the better device with which to review images. And because of the low-resolution nature of CT, MR and US images, these could be likely candidates for easy and credible image review. There are plenty of research studies in progress of course. It will be interesting to see the resulting conclusions.
Technical facts 1: Typical DICOM Image Size Dimensions
Technical facts 2: Apple’s iPhone4 and iPad Specs
(information from http://www.apple.com )
COMRAD Upgrade Update
Jasmine
We have been progressively rolling out our latest release of COMRAD over the year. Over half of our clients are running a Jasmine version of COMRAD, and we have a number of clients currently in the process of being upgraded.
Please note that we have a ‘change freeze’ from 13th December 2010 to 10th January 2011, and during this period there will be no upgrades to client production systems.
In the New Year we will recommence our upgrade schedule with the view of having all clients move to Jasmine. Smaller sites will be upgraded on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and larger sites and major upgrades (Ivy version to Jasmine version) will be upgraded over a weekend.
We will soon be in touch with you to schedule upgrades. Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with any queries.
Team COMRAD
Chris Walter - IT/Application Specialist
Chris joined COMRAD in November 2010. He has over 9 years of Technical Support experience within Australia spending 8 years with Eastern Health and 1 year with Sigma Pharmaceuticals as an IT support specialist and has been involved with the implementation of the HealthSMART program within Eastern Health. Chris is based in COMRAD's Melbourne office.
Solution FAQs
Need Help?
Contact COMRAD Support
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AUS 1800 659 643
NZ +64 3 353 1444
Speed up your reporting - AutoLoad your priors with your COMRAD-Cedara PACS
Did you know that if you use an integrated COMRAD-Cedara system, you can have your profile configured to automatically load the prior imaging studies of your choice?
eg ‘If the current study is an MG, then automatically load the last 2 MG studies and also the last US study’; or ‘automatically load the last study for anything that is selected’.
You can still use the ‘Prior Images’ button to load any prior imaging of your choice when you need to (ad hoc).
If your COMRAD is a version of Jasmine and you would like this ‘AutoLoad Priors’ configured, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Radiologists! How to Review without Accidentally Amending!
Accidentally amending a distributed report can be frustrating and requires a COMRAD Support call to put it right.The best way to review in-progress visits (still ‘on-the-table’) and old visits is in the Radiologist/Report Viewer. Here, you can see all visits (in-progress, current, and priors) and all integrated imaging. And, it is ‘read-only’ so you cannot possibly end up amending a distributed report!
Alternatively, in the Dictation screen, it is possible to review reports and images. But you need to tick the ‘Review Only’ before you search! If you forget to do this, and see the warning ‘This report has already been VERIFIED and DISTRIBUTED. Do you wish to continue?’ click the ‘Cancel’ button to return to the dictation Worklist.
Please Login to download a PDF about reviewing reports and images in COMRAD.
Powerscribe: Automatically Bold, Italicise, and Underline your Powerscribe Reports
You are now able to configure your report templates to automatically bold, italicise and underline.
Powerscribe now offers automatic text formatting by means of 'sequence tags'. Radiologists can now modify their existing shortcuts to include these tags and COMRAD will then automatically convert the text to reflect the desired formatting.
In your shortcut,
There is a preference in the COMRAD application that enables this functionality.
Please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with any queries.
Avoid complicated Medicare reconciliation problems… check your Advanced Payments every day!
We recommend that our Australian customers manually reconcile all Medicare payment discrepancies every day (or at least on a regular and frequent basis). This check should be part of your daily housekeeping tasks.
If Medicare Advanced Payments are not checked and reconciled regularly, fixing the mismatch of amounts claimed and paid can become a daunting and time-consuming accounting task. This daily job needs to be carried out with confidence.
If you would like help please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Any Feedback?
Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
