Radiology is currently experiencing a very volatile state, as advancements in device technology are creating a new landscape of competition. Information technology (IT) and equipment are expanding the reach of the radiologists to new therapeutic techniques.
As technologies such as enterprise-wide connectivity and molecular medicine merge, and the role of radiology overlaps with other medical domains, the medical imaging industry follows suit, and is rapidly consolidating.

An integrated RIS/PACS, clinical applications and enterprise-wide access to the electronic health record (EHR) promise to increase a radiologist’s productivity and enhance efficiency by automating radiology workflow. Information technology (IT) is also viewed as one of several answers to the continued radiologist shortage. However, many facilities have yet to realize the full potential of IT as the result of not fully addressing workflow changes when a facility moves from a film-based to a digital environment, and consequently have not seen a positive effect on radiology workflow.

Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), Canada’s preeminent radiation therapy treatment facility, annually treats more than 10,000 new patients and serves 190,000 outpatients. Long in the vanguard of looking to technology both to assist in cancer treatment and manage its business operations, PMH has since 1995 relied on IMPAC software products for the flexibility and control they provide in managing the clinical radiation oncology process. “Over the past few years, use of the IMPAC system has also allowed PMH to become filmless and paperless.


With all new technologies come new challenges. As imaging has evolved within the pathology domain from analog to digital, causing radiology and pathology imaging to crossover, the devices that generate the digital images pose several challenges.

With the rush to convert to digital, we sometimes forget the big picture, including what comes next. This begs the question, what will happen when PACS is the incumbent? We posed this question to a team of experts to see from their perspective how IT is transforming healthcare.

In President Bush’s last State of the Union address, he called for “most Americans to have an electronic health record (EHR) within the next 10 years.” Over the past year, the healthcare industry has been encouraged by an outpouring of congressional support for the computerization of health information. However, a bipartisan legislation to fulfill this promise has yet to be passed.

How is NeuroLogica upholding its conviction that all people, regardless of where they live, should have access to high-quality medical imaging?

The tremendous accuracy with which a physician can treat tumors with Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) is the very nature of the technology’s problem. IMRT’s high degree of accuracy compared to conventional radiation therapy allows physicians to deliver higher radiation doses, yet, its precision in clinical applications is hindered by patient and organ movement.

With all the discussion surrounding the development of a national Electronic Health Record (EHR), perhaps nothing better demonstrates this need than the events that unfolded on the Gulf Coast last September. When Katrina raged ashore and left a wake of destruction, government and industries struggled to regain footing. The stories of stranded and vulnerable citizens and hospital patients struck a social cord across the U.S. However, an opportunity was created, one that received a timely response.

On a recent road trip to Arizona in my RV, I noticed that the dashboard indicator for the engine temperature did not function. My wife urged me to stop at a dealer to have it checked. After about a half-hour wait, the mechanic called me to look at what he found: A squirrel had apparently gotten into my engine compartment, made a nest and in the process chewed my indicator cable as well as one of the spark plug cables. He asked whether I had noticed the degradation in performance and poor fuel mileage running on five instead of six cylinders, but, as a matter of fact, I had not.
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