Advanced Teleradiology Technology Leads to Improvements in Healthcare
It seems that with every new year, teleradiology makes a new advancement that helps professionals in healthcare do their jobs a little better. 2017 is no different as trends and technological advancements pave the way for a fresh outlook on teleradiology services.
Workflow
It’s often said that the traditional PACS and RIS systems don’t do much in the way of streamlining workflow, but teleradiology advancements are helping to create more intelligent workflow management solutions. Taking a step above image viewing and reporting features, new smart tools are being used to seamlessly send images where they need to go.
Mobility
Many hospitals continue to make big investments in their pagers for communication, so it’s not difficult to understand why image management on smartphones has been slow to make its way to the healthcare industry. But, it’s finally happening. Tablet computers and smartphones are slowly finding their way into the healthcare space for image viewing, giving teleradiology a nice boost.
Consumerization
Partially due to various reforms in healthcare, there is a consumer focus now that wasn’t present a decade ago. Patients are getting more involved with their health, gaining access to their records through portals, and this includes their medical images. Obviously, this greatly impacts teleradiology and the need for greater availability of images.
Cloud
The cloud-based services being offered today are ubiquitous, and they are probably the foundation of what’s driving advancements in teleradiology today. The cloud is helping to reduce costs while providing a much-improved means for delivering images in an efficient and effective manner.
E-training
As is true with many industries, there is a shortage of qualified individuals in the radiology industry. Thanks to flexible and scalable e-training opportunities, the pool of radiologists is growing. Teleradiology is an attractive field to the many workers who yearn for more independence in how they put in their 40-hour work weeks.
Customer Viewers
3D report viewing is in demand, but until recently, they required a high-end workstation to take full advantage of. Known as “thin client” solutions, these 3D processing and viewing solutions do not require data to be routed back and forth between servers and workstations, which means more people are gaining better access to 3D images, which is a great boost to teleradiology.
At OffSite Image Management, Inc., we’ve developed a solution for teleradiology called TeleRad360, which offers total exam accountability back to hospitals. It also allows our clients to drop their outdated platforms. Teleradiology is complicated, but we’re offering comprehensive services, which is a rarity in this industry, that allow clients to send their images out to hospitals and image centers and have full assurance that it will get exactly where it needs to go.