Dhruv Chopra started his career in radiology as a courier for a small practice. His duties included shuttling imaging orders, CDs and radiology reports between the practice, referrers and client imaging centers. He learned to endure city traffic jams like a street-hardened cabbie. Today he’s chief executive officer of a thriving company delivering high-tech solutions to radiology practices of all sizes.
As coronary CT angiography (CCTA) continues its rapid expansion, scanner vendors are now offering more economical solutions to ensure access to imaging technology beyond premium systems most often only found at flagship hospitals and academic centers. To conquer CCTA’s technical challenges, new technologies and AI are being incorporated into a new scanner to simplify acquisition and consistently improve image quality.
Exposure to scatter radiation and orthopedic issues related to years of wearing lead aprons during long EP procedures has led electrophysiologists to seek out new ways to reduce the need for angiographic X-ray.
Advancements in radiofrequency (RF) catheter ablation technology have been incremental over the past 30 years in efforts to improve safety, procedural efficiency and patient outcomes. While some newer technologies have gained a lot of attention in electrophysiology (EP) over the past several years, RF remains the solid frontline treatment.
"The onus is on us as cardiologists to make sure we offer the very best possible devices for our patients with the available data that we have," interventional cardiologist Anene Ukaigwe, MD, explained.
Apple used to push the world to “think different.” Today, the profession of radiology is being driven to think differentiation. And the impetus is issuing not from a single corporation, but rather from myriad market forces—from commoditization to consolidation to, perhaps most pressingly, ever-narrowing profit margins.
Through the exceptionally tight partnership of vRad Chief Medical Officer, Ben Strong, MD, and Chief Information Officer, Shannon Werb—explored in Part I of this interview—vRad has achieved a synergistic melding of those concepts that truly are driving clinical innovation, as evidenced by the discussion with Strong and Werb.
Earlier this year vRad and San Diego-based XIFIN (pronounced zy-fin) began closely collaborating on an online workflow that will offer referring physicians a one-stop fusion of all diagnostic reports—from radiology, pathology and clinical labs.
As an early adopter of speech recognition technology in 2000, Richard H. Wiggins, III, MD, CIIP, FSIIM, witnessed a stunning reduction in turnaround times (TAT) at the University of Utah Health Care, Salt Lake City.
Breast-imaging interpretations by telemedicine? More than a few have said that it couldn’t be done—or, at least, that it couldn’t be done well.
When we began working with our first radiology clients well over 10 years ago, we assumed they would be similar to most other medical and law groups for which we had consulted.
Of all scenarios in radiology that call for lightning-fast turnaround times coupled with absolute accuracy, few present the pressure of serving as the radiology group on call for in-season sports-injury studies.
