April 3, 2019 — Konica Minolta Healthcare Americas Inc. will highlight new features of Exa Mammo, a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) designed for breast imaging centers, at the 2019 Society for Breast Imaging/American College of Radiology (SBI/ACR) Breast Imaging Symposium, April 4-7 in Hollywood, Fla. Exa Mammo enables anywhere mammography reading with a zero-footprint viewer and server-side rendering for fast and easy access to images, including digital breast tomosynthesis. The new features, Exa Chat and Exa Peer Review, were developed to help practices improve communication among providers and address quality assurance, including double reads.
Attendees at the 2019 SBI/ACR Breast Imaging Symposium will have an opportunity to view demonstrations of Exa Chat and Exa Peer Review in the Konica Minolta Healthcare booth. The features will be commercially available later this year.
Breast imaging has been at the forefront of industry-wide quality assurance efforts, including the Mammography Quality Standards Act (MQSA) to the American College of Radiology mammography accreditation program. The Institute of Medicine has also recommended studying the effects of medical education, reader volume and double reading to improve the quality of mammogram interpretation.
Michael Linver, M.D., FACR, FSIB, is a leading educator and advocate for advancing breast imaging technology. His vision for the future of breast imaging includes the sharing of patient studies with centers of excellence to further promote high-quality interpretations and quality assurance measures.
When it comes to quality assurance and double reads, both Exa Chat and Exa Peer Review fit seamlessly into the radiology workflow, enhancing efficiency and minimizing radiology interruptions, according to Konica Minolta.
“Any way that we can make communication faster among colleagues improves patient care,” said Linver. “Having access to tools such as peer review and the ability to securely chat without leaving your reading workflow would be a tremendous asset for any breast imaging center.”
Exa Chat is an easy-to-use system that lets users communicate one-on-one or with entire departments. It allows radiologists to quickly and securely discuss and share patients, studies, approved reports and more. This helps improve communication within and between the outpatient imaging center and hospital radiology department, with the assurance that patient health information is being communicated in a secure manner.
Exa Peer Review is embedded into the radiologists' workflow to quickly share and reference specific patients, studies, approved reports and more. Exa Peer Review has customizable criteria including percentage of studies, total number of studies, RVU based or value based on modality and/or exam, and timeframe per criteria. Exa Peer Review is built into the Exa Platform, eliminating the need for managing third-party peer review systems.
For more information: www.konicaminolta.com/medicalusa
