From the January 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Vendors are working to raise providers’ familiarity with the equipment and its dose lowering capabilities. For instance, GE Healthcare said it was looking to provide more training through free online courses and dose seminars across the country. And last year, Siemens convened a panel of 15 CT experts in the fields of radiology, cardiology and physics, to figure out how OEMs can develop and improve dose reduction technologies.

The panel’s first recommendation is simple: start using the dose reduction tools that are already available. “There’s a difference between talking about things and doing things,” says panelist Dr. Elliot Fishman, a professor of radiology, oncology and surgery with Johns Hopkins University. “Who’s going to be against low dose radiation? The question is: How do you implement that in practice?”


The expert panelists are also working on sharing protocols and best practices within their medical facilities. “If something goes well in one institution, and you get a really good dose and a really good study, there’s no reason for everyone to reinvent the wheel,” says Fishman.

Even some third-party service providers are now offering equipment training in their contracts. One company, Shared Imaging, incorporates education in its CT rent and lease programs, because doses can be “dramatically reduced just by educating and training the staff of the hospital,” says Ray Stachowiak, the company’s president.

The challenge of tracking
Technology and training are essential to lowering dose, but so is actually tracking a patient’s lifetime exposure. “It’s very hard to improve what you can’t measure,” notes GE’s Denison.

That’s why in addition to its database for tracking dose throughout the practice, Wake Radiology imaging professionals set up a system in its partner hospitals that enables emergency department physicians to see the number of CT scans a patient has received when they arrive. “It searches the patient record,” says Presson. “If they had five CTs in two years, their name will get a little icon next to it.”

This way, physicians can make more informed decisions about using a CT scanner on a specific patient. But this practice is confined to Wake Radiology’s database. While vendors are introducing dose-reduction technologies, the need for solutions that automate dose monitoring and reporting and crosses hospital database borders persists. “There’s a hole in that area,” says Presson.

“It’s a tough niche to fill because every hospital system has its own health record system. I’m not aware of any that have a very good radiation dose tracking system. Our hospital systems have electronic health records but they don’t really have a system to [track radiation dose],” he says.

January 2011 Magazine

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