Radiology Reporting Embedded into Electronic Medical Records

Next-generation radiology reporting systems allow radiologists to efficiently incorporate reports that embed key images (traditionally referred to as a “multimedia report”), show or hide annotations and measurements, and perform lesion analysis and tracking, all with little impact on the radiologist’s dictation style and productivity.

The resulting multimedia report is distributed as an embedded part of a health system’s electronic medical record (EMR). Shortly, the multimedia reports will integrate live feedback and messaging tools to increase the bidirectional communication between radiologists and referring physicians.

Primordial (San Mateo, CA, USA), a vendor of communications, workflow, quality management, and analytics applications for the medical imaging market, announced its entry into a key new product area: next-generation radiologist reporting systems, as well as the development of extensive new capabilities across all of its product lines.

Through the management of all core radiologist reading (and for some, protocolling) workflow at large integrated delivery networks (IDNs) and hospitals, Primordial’s orchestration application has greatly grown, providing advanced reading workflow capabilities never before available in radiology information system (RIS) or picture archiving and communication system (PACS) systems. PRISM allows departments to implement complex assignment rules, real-time productivity tracking, rotation-based worklist adjustments, service-level reprioritization, clinical directives, and customizable bidirectional integration with PACS, dictation, EMR, document management, and other customer systems.

Primordial has enhanced its critical results, emergency department (ED)-radiologist/resident and its Presence/collaboration applications with sophisticated paging capabilities and is also integrating with third-party communication hubs to permit virtual rounds for radiologists.

Primordial’s Quality campaign solution allows hospitals to create campaigns targeted on specific report or image quality issues. The system then automatically finds and distributes suitable studies to the appropriate persons for review. Quality campaigns can now be particularly fine-tuned, for example, matching on specific positive findings in the report (e.g., coronary artery calcification) to review specific types of studies.

Primordial’s customizable and ergonomic electronic whiteboards platform has been extended with domain-specific enhancements addressing ED and interventional radiology departments. The company has developed and deployed a resident scoring and comparison application, which can visually identify changes to a report made after an attending physician reviews and edits the resident’s reports. This enhances the resident scoring and analytics of Primordial’s other teaching applications.

Primordial’s search application continues to incorporate external data sources other than radiology reports—pathology and lab data are now integrated. The lab and path data optimize Primordial’s unified patient view (patient jacket) and support features such as rad-path correlation and notification. Departments can also now track patient and referring MD compliance with follow-up recommendations, and create worklists to facilitate follow-ups and reminders for patients returning to the department.

DoseMetrix now allows sites to automatically upload DICOM dose information to the American College of Radiology’s (ACR) Dose Index Registry (DIR). Primordial has also been developing advanced fluoro tracking and compliance logging at two leading institutions, one of which has engaged Primordial to track fluoro across the entire enterprise such as radiology, cardiology, and surgery.

RadMetrix goes further than the conventional reports available in RIS and other third-party systems, with the addition of sophisticated analytics relating to schedule efficiency and optimization, integration of core external workflow data, and display of data in very flexible dashboards that even embed externally developed applications.

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