Newsletters

In this Newsletter

• CEO Update
• COMRAD Solution Update

It’s a double celebration for us this year  – it’s Christmas and Comrad is celebrating being in business for 25 years!

CEO Update

Comrad is now celebrating 25 years in business! This is a significant achievement from humble beginnings for a software development company to survive the growing pains to become the largest dedicated Australian and New Zealand RIS provider.  We are proud that our original customers in New Zealand and later in Australia remain with us today. The journey for Comrad continues and we foresee a bright future.

2012 has been a year of high activity and growth for Comrad.

• PowerScribe 360 integrated with COMRAD RIS has been launched with 13 implementations completed or in progress
• COMRAD RIS 6.6 release completed and being rolled out
• Rolling out new Merge PACS and Merge iConnect Access products
• Rolling out the COMRAD RIS Replication solution to support client Disaster Recovery Strategies
• Comrad market share continues to grow

To each & every Comrad client - Thank You - for your continued business support in 2012.  This sincere thank you is to the CEO's, Radiologists, IT Managers, Operations Managers, Radiographers, Marketing Liaison Officers, Receptionists, Accounting staff and all the users of COMRAD RIS. We understand COMRAD RIS is an integral part of your business which drives your referral relationships, workflow, revenue flow and overall the engine of your diagnostic imaging business.  We remain focused on strengthening the COMRAD RIS Solution and team to ensure we will meet your needs. We understand we can do better and our path of continuous improvement remains our priority.

Over the festive period Dec 24th-Jan 7th Comrad will provide resources especially for client support to enable you to provide business continuity.

On behalf of the entire Comrad team I wish you, your family & friends a relaxing, happy and safe Christmas period and a successful new year ahead.

Kind Regards, Elizabeth Delahunty, COMRAD CEO

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COMRAD Solution Update

I attended the RSNA conference in Chicago at the end of November.  For me (particularly with my new Product Director hat on) this is about learning where the industry is going, what the trends are, who is leading the pack in terms of innovation etc.  I always find that this is a week that leaves me inspired and energized again. If I had to narrow it down to just two themes for the meeting they would be:

1. “Patients First” – this was in fact the conference theme for RSNA 2012.  The message to the industry was that as a profession, radiology needs to get closer to its patients.  The profession has become somewhat invisible within healthcare provision and radiologists need to take back ownership of their patients – to own the patient’s problem. Obviously this theme provides some direction for us as a provider to the industry.
   
   
2. Integration & Standards - The other major theme was integration of radiology to the wider healthcare community via adoption of standards.  This integration via standards featured at many different levels, for example between products, between organizations, between clinicians, between sources of data and between patients and clinicians.  The message was that if you wanted to play in Health Informatics then you needed to support the standards being adopted by the industry.  RSNA itself is very active in promoting these standards. Initiatives that RSNA promotes include:
   
   
   1. IHE - Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise – is about improving the way healthcare systems communicate with one another and assisting the adoption of EHR (Electronic Healthcare Records).  It does this by defining a number of IHE Profiles which provide specifications for critical use cases for information sharing between systems.  As an example the Scheduled Workflow (SWF) Profile will define (among other things) how one system can place an order for a radiology exam with another system (the RIS).  Obviously if all systems that need to place radiology orders (e.g. hospital wards) or make radiology referrals (e.g. GPs) talk the same language as the RIS then it all becomes plug and play and the patient outcome can be improved.
      
      
   2. RadLex – is a Radiology Lexicon – a unified language of radiology terms. It allows unambiguous communication within the radiology environment. 30,000 terms are defined so there is a common understanding of their meaning.  A subset of RadLex is Playbook which encompasses the terms describing devices, imaging examinations and procedure steps performed in radiology.  Obviously this helps define a universally understood set of radiology orderables and greatly assists the problem of understanding what radiology examination the clinician is ordering for his/her patient.
      
      
   3. MIRC – stands for Medical Imaging Resource Centre - it encompasses a set of free software tools to support a Teaching File System and a Clinical Trials Processor. The Teaching File System allows the user to author, manage, store and share radiology teaching files through any browser, locally and across institutions.  A Teaching File System that is not bound to a particular proprietary information system allows the easy exchange of interesting cases between clinicians regardless of where they work.
      
      
   4. Image Share – is a network created to enable radiologists to share medical images with patients using Personal Health Record (PHR) accounts.  This project is in a pilot stage at present providing services to patients at five medical centres in the US.  Plans are underway to expand the network.
      
      
   5. MU - Meaningful Use – is a North American initiative to encourage the standardization of electronic health care records by physicians.  While not directly relevant to the NZ/AU markets, all the international vendors are making their systems MU compliant and so we are starting to see these work-flows in our markets now.
      
      
   6. Reporting Templates – RSNA has undertaken to improve reporting practices by creating a library of clear and consistent report templates.  These templates make it possible to integrate all of the evidence collected during the imaging procedure, including clinical data, coded terminology, technical parameters, measurements, annotations and key images.  This initiative is encouraging vendors to adopt these templates as part of their systems.

In summary there is a big move towards adoption of standards to allow better interoperability between systems.  Comrad is working in some of these areas now and keeping a close eye on developments in the others.

Of course it is very hard to narrow such a large conference into just two themes.  Several other developments to note include:

1. Structured Reporting – radiology reports have been generated for over 100 years now but the process and output has changed very little in this time.  The use of Structured Reporting is designed to address some of the inherent weaknesses of this antique process – it will allow the capture of radiology report information so that it can later be retrieved and re-used.  A structured report has three key features:
   
   
   1. A Structured Format - with paragraphs and section headings that distinguish the basic elements of the report.  For example many practices will use the heading “Impression” or “Summary” to highlight the most important findings.
      
      
   2. A Consistent Organisation - as an example, a CT examination might follow subheadings that describe each of the anatomic areas described in the report such as liver, spleen, pancreas and kidneys.  This is often referred to as itemised or standardised reporting. Studies have shown that the referrers prefer this style of report because specific information can be found more easily than a narrative report.
      
      
   3. A Standard Language or Lexicon - and this is where RadLex can come in.  By using defined terms in a radiology report the resultant report becomes more accessible and reusable and the chance of miscommunication becomes much lower.  In fact a structured report written using defined terms can be codified and translated into different languages with no loss of meaning.
2. Business Intelligence (BI) – is a topical subject and is being driven by the explosion of data collection and the requirement for modern businesses to understand what is happening within their business.  Good BI can enable better outcomes in the future.  This is an area that is just starting to emerge in radiology but has been a focus in many industries for years.  This is an area in which Comrad is actively working at present.
   
   
3. Preliminary Report Work-flow – allows the clinical report to be largely completed by the technical staff for presentation to the radiologist for checking and/or addition of a summary.  It will be built primarily from templates, by selecting options within a template, by automatic inclusion of data from the study and with perhaps a small narrative from the technologist.  This is another area where Comrad is actively working in.

2013 is going to be an exciting year for Comrad.  The product enhancements that we are working on will have significant benefits within your working environment.  Have a very Merry Christmas and I look forward to working with you in the New Year.

Regards, Andrew Scott - Product Director and Founder

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