PACS Tidbits
New stuff in PACS seems to be overwhelmed somewhat by the Trump-like stampede of EHR data. Still, I've got a couple of items which might interest my loyal readers, all four of you.Let us start with GE. Our Universal Disappointment Viewer should be updated to the next version sometime in the next few weeks. For those who haven't heard, our current UV has a number of problems, not the least of which involves not displaying one or more slices from a CT series when scrolling through. Fortunately, we do see a blacked-out pane with the phrase "0% loaded..." to let us know that we might be missing something. That is a major step ...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - March 30, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Lingering Frustration And Bad Design
Mrs. Dalai loves HGTV, and so I end up watching it quite a bit. I think I've even become somewhat of a house connoisseur after all this time.So let's look at a house, pictured above. Wouldn't you love to live in this house? It's a great house! 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, gourmet kitchen with granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, the whole nine yards! The house contains every gadget you could possibly want.But there's a problem. The house was designed by someone who lives in a cave and doesn't drive a car. It is part of, well, a rental community, owned by an absentee landlord who will never set foot in the neighborh...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - March 27, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Cinders, EHRs, and Other Disappointments
I admit to being addicted to new technology. I love gadgets of all shapes, sizes, and sadly, prices. If there's some technological toy out there I'm missing, let me know and I'll run right out and buy it.The crowd-funded sites, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, are the perfect trap for suckers people like me. Here, we find a plethora of inventions that one just has to have, requiring only a small investment for a piece of the future. Dangerous places, these.Sometimes, the invention is so outlandish that it doesn't get funding, but some creations are so tempting and apparently within the realm of possibility that the rubes li...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - March 7, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Merge CEO Leaves To Run Tribune Publishing
Is it me? Is it something I said?I keep having to break in new CEO's at Merge Healthcare, and AMICAS before that.Back in the AMICAS days, I apparently chased out Hamid Tabatabaie. Then Peter McClennen. Then Steve Kahane. Then Merge came on board, and I thought I had a keeper with Justin Dearborn. But alas, he too has seen the light.I'm kidding, of course, about me having much of anything to do with anything at Merge, but it is true that Justin Dearborn is leaving Merge to become the CEO of Tribune Publishing. From the Chicago Tribune, one of the papers TP manages, comes this article, dateline yesterday:Three weeks after we...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - February 24, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
My New Workstation
I sit on my backside most of the day, staring at a workstation monitor. At some sites, I have the Herman Miller Aeron chair, which is OK, but there has to be a better way to sit and think and interpret, and whatever else it is I do all day.And here it is:The Altwork Company has come up with a better way, a "new way to work," the Altwork Station. Look at the pictures and watch the video, and I think you'll agree, it has got to be better than what most of us do now.This next step in workspace evolution is fairly reasonable as such things go...As an early adopter, you’ll be one of the first people on Earth to have a worksta...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - February 22, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Brother, Can You Spare A Dime ($0.10 CAD) For A PET?
The Canadian healthcare system has been touted as the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, the epitome of the Single-Payer model, the Way It Should Be Done, the ultimate, logical manifestation of where we are headed. The Affordable Obama Care Act is, of course, just a brief bus-stop on the highway to Canada.But wait just a moment, eh? All is not perfect in the land of the frozen. How many Americans (or Saudis or potentates of various small nations) go to Canada for esoteric, life-saving surgery? Conversely, how many Canadians cross the border (no wall as yet) for their care? (Answer: Depending on the source and th...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - February 20, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Hostage Data
I was first alerted to the situation by my friend Stacey, who directed me to the story on the Daily Kos. I tend to avoid that site like the plague, but I had to read this story. Fortunately, the author, "Medical Quack", has the information on his own blog, and the story has since been picked up by many other news outlets, including Fox.Here are the facts from Medical Quack:A Southern California hospital was a victim of a cyber attack, interfering with day-to-day operations, the hospital's president and CEO said.Staff at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center began noticing "significant IT issues and declared an intern...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - February 18, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
The Measure Of A Company
The measure of a man cannot be whether he ever makes mistakes, because he will make mistakes. It's what he does in response to his mistakes. The same is true of companies. We have to apologize, we have to fix the problem, and we have to learn from our mistakes.Wil ShipleySoftware, being written by humans (until Watson gets the hang of it, I suppose) is going to contain errors. When the program has something to do with the medical field, those glitches could cause devastating effects.Now being human as well, and having made my share of mistakes in interpreting images over the years, I'm not really trying to throw stones at ...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - February 6, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Reporting In
A few weeks ago, I received this message from one of the top Merge execs (emphasis mine):Notification of Enhanced FDA Reporting MethodologyDear Valued Customer,As part of our commitment to ensure compliance and driven by our objective to deliver high-quality medical devices, we want to inform you of a change in our quality management processes to provide greater transparency to our customers and raise the bar on delivering quality in the medical device industry. I also want to take this opportunity to reiterate Merge Healthcare's commitment to implementing corrective actions to ensure compliance with the Federal Food, Drug...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - January 25, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Rad-aid
If you didn't know, I'm semi-retired, working only 26 weeks of the year. That would be half of the year for those uncomfortable with mathematics. The ultimate plan is to do this for another 12-18 months (one to one and one half years if you need the conversion factor) and then goodbye to the joys of private practice.Of course, my ultimate plan lacks some ultimate planning. Being relatively young, and in relatively good health, I've got to do something with all that free time beyond writing blog posts few read, and lurking around Facebook and AuntMinnie.com.A friend knew people who were going to create a flying hospital wit...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - January 8, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
The Demonstration
Image courtesy of Dilbert.comHi, everyone. I see we have some folks here from Administration, and from IT, and even five or six radiologists. That's great. I was sent here by your EMR vendor to give you a look at the new RIS add-on, DoctorThingy. It's a nice piece of software that can be used in either RIS-driven or PACS-driven mode. We could probably run it both ways, but we don't recommend doing that. Why? Well, you might have some trouble synchronizing worklists, and some exams might just get read twice. We don't want that to happen, do we? So let's see how this looks.Your overhead projector will only work in landscape ...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - January 7, 2016 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Frasier
Hey, Dad!What, Frasier? There isn't a lot of time, Dad, and there's a lot to say. The vet will be here pretty soon, you know. Vet? Yeah, Dad. I'm almost 17 years old, damn old for a Jack Russell Terrier, and I'm not doing so hot. I know you see it when you look at me. Yeah, Fras. I know. I had hoped you didn't understand.I put on that dumb face so you won't worry about me. But it's OK, Dad. Really. I'm ready. I can barely breathe, I can't eat, I can't stand up anymore. I'm not having a very good day, and I'm tired. Really, really tired. It's time. We all know it.I'm sorry, Frasier. We don't want to let go of you. You aren'...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - December 18, 2015 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Exhibits At An Exhibition: PACS, HYPOTHETICALLY-Speaking
Having little time at this year's RSNA, I was able to only briefly stop in to see friends at the Visage and lifeIMAGE booths. Both products show nice incremental improvements. Visage offers deconstructed PACS, with better collation of prior studies in this incarnation. It is a viable alternative to a full-fledged PACS, IF your IT folks can handle the concept. Big IF for some. Again, there is no worklist option included; "That would make us a PACS company!" So what's wrong with that?lifeIMAGE continues to progress, now with even better connectivity. See this nice summary from Imaging Technology News for details. Many PACS v...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - December 6, 2015 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Exhibits At An Exhibition: Siemens Press Conference
"Pictures at an Exhibition" Courtesy TzviErezI'm back from a rather brief trip to Chicago and RSNA. I had two days to see stuff and get some edumacation, as we say down here in the South, and I tried to make the most of it.Educationally, I used my limited time to concentrate on PET and thyroid/parathyroid imaging. I come out reassured that we are doing things correctly. I'm still a little confused as to the best application of SPECT/CT to parathyroid imaging, so I'll probably be doing some experimentation when we finally get the darn thing sometime early next year. One presentation claimed better accuracy with good ol...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - December 5, 2015 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
Code Name: AvicennaThe Future In Progress
One of my Radiology professors back in residency, a very wise man, had a saying: "The more dogmatic you get, the more likely you will be wrong."In the medical business, there is a tie for the three most important little words: "I was wrong," competes nicely with "I don't know." (If you were wondering, the four scariest words in the radiological lexicon are: "You read a scan...")The Future has a way of sneaking up on us, and occasionally biting us on the behind. In my youth, I thought for example, that age 50 was a long way off. Now I'm well into that decade of life, and the 60's are looming. As Steve Miller put it, "T...
Source: Dalai's PACS Blog - December 4, 2015 Category: Radiology Source Type: blogs
