A small imaging-informatics company just got a large infusion of cash to refine its forthcoming product line and speed its progress along the regulatory road.  

Picture this. You’re in charge of medical imaging at a practice employing numerous radiologists across several sites. Your boss knocks on your office door. Comes in and asks you for a quick snapshot of practice-wide performance. Wants to know report turnaround times by radiologist and by site. Says, “That’s really all I want. It’s not a big deal, right?”

The medical-billing firm Zotec Partners has come out with a software feature that enables leaders of radiology practices to identify inefficiencies in need of fixing.  

Most knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in cancer treatment draws from the meager 3 percent of cancer patients who participate in clinical trials. A new partnership between the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and SAP, the German software giant, looks to leverage “big data” to glean insights from the other 97 percent. 

Radiologists are putting patients at the center of care with the use of 3D modeling in surgical treatment planning. By leveraging image overlay tools available on FUJIFILM Medical’s Synapse 3D solution, radiologists at Keck Hospital, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital, Los Angeles, are using volumetric imaging to generate 3D models of organs and other parts of the anatomy.

Medical image storage has become complex: People expect easy access to images, and with the proliferation of electronic health records (EHR), this includes physicians. Vendor-neutral archive (VNAs) technology provides a single consolidated enterprise image management system, eliminating silo storage of specialized images.

Over the past 20 years, the radiology specialty has adapted well to increasing volumes, while maintaining a high caliber of service.  However, certain macro-trends are bringing change: the move to fee-for-value vs. fee-for-volume means radiologists must navigate a new and radically different healthcare payment environment, says Brian Baker, founder and CEO of Franklin, Tenn.-based health care research firm Carealytics.

Preparing for the paradigm shift to value-based care remains a topic of intense focus and discussion while the concept continues to be defined in a meaningful way, according to Cindy Hardin, executive director, Infrastructure Product Management in imaging and workflow solutions at McKesson.