Cutting the tether: efficiency gains and workstyle / lifestyle options

Remote reading also can cut the tether of the doctor to a physical location, providing a number of benefits for the doctor as well as for the hospital. On the doctor’s side, he or she has greater ability to choose where they live (as long as they can get high-speed online access). There’s potentially greater flexibility with their work schedule as well. Their work setting can be finely customized to their personal preferences and their workday can start and end reading imaging exams instead of starting and ending their day with a commute.


For hospitals, remote reading gives the facility access to a wider pool of qualified professionals. This can be especially important for rural hospitals, which already struggle with staffing due to the small population to tap into. Smaller hospitals also have a challenge of having enough work to justify a full-time radiologist. That challenge is compounded when they need the expertise of someone in a subspecialty. They may instead have to make arrangements to share a radiologist with other area hospitals. But the scheduling of reads can be much easier if, again, the commute time for the radiologist is removed.

Of course, a hybrid model is also possible, with a doctor splitting his or her time between on-location and remote reads. And even for facilities with dedicated in-house professionals, the ability to consult with colleagues is elevated through the use of high-quality displays on mobile devices like iPads.

Up until fairly recently, remote access was a challenge due to low connection speeds and even the comfort level doctors had of seeing images on a smaller screen. As society settles into technology through everyday interaction, the comfort level increases. EBM’s Pan believes that the proliferation of consumer technology has gotten physicians, especially younger ones, more comfortable with new, mobile devices. “Our users adapt very rapidly to reading on the iPad Pro, whether viewing on stands or holding it in their hands while on their feet. Working with mobile devices has become more routine, as has working remotely. We believe that with this FDA approval this kind of reading in radiology and beyond will become the standard.”

Investigating the options: vendor neutrality, superior software

If your facility is considering the adoption of teleradiology, it’s important to carefully investigate the options available. For instance, will you have images being read that were captured by equipment from a number of manufacturers? If that’s the case, a vendor neutral solution like EBM’s is probably a must-have. How intuitive is the program? Can it be used on readily available and fairly inexpensive hardware (like an iPad)? Does the company providing the software have a good reputation and do they provide strong customer support?

It’s also possible you don’t need to go it alone with researching tele-solutions. If you’re sharing the services of a doctor with another hospital or hospitals, splitting up the research and discussing as a group (your facility, the other facility or facilities and the teleradiologist) to figure out the remote solution that will work best for all. It may take some time to get definitive answers to all those questions, but the time spent in preparing and planning is almost always less costly (both in minutes and dollars) than the time spent correcting a mistake.

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