The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be bankrolling a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for Austin-based NanoHybrids to develop contrast agents for the detection of atherosclerotic plaques, the company announced today.

Blue Mountain Health System may not have been early to the digital revolution when it implemented its first RIS/PACS in 2010, but it has moved further than many larger health systems in the intervening four years.Since implementation, the two-hospital community health system has dramatically reduced turnaround time, increased technologist productivity and improved patient satisfaction and safety. Much of that improvement can be attributed to Blue Mountain’s crowning achievement: It has achieved a 100% paperless workflow in the radiology department.

To Cory Cino, the history of Wyoming County Community Health System in Western New York divides neatly between “before RIS” and “everything since.”The PACS administrator vividly recalls his radiology department doing patient scheduling and tracking on sheets of loose-leaf paper in three-ring binders and reporting via cassette-tape transcriptions on a homegrown database. Then there was perhaps the most cumbersome practice of all: storing pretty much everything the department produced—reports, tapes and, prior to PACS, films—wherever an untaken spot could be found…including on the roof.

Productivity surged without additional work hours in the medical imaging division of Sutter Health in Sacramento when radiologists received data-driven performance metrics, according to the company that supplied the data tools.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has relaunched its Open Payment website. The general impression is that the new site is worlds easier to navigate than its original launch.

Pharmaceutical developers AstraZeneca announced Oct. 16 that the company’s research and development division, MedImmune, will be collaborating with the University of Cambridge on four new projects.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) appears to be brought on in the darker months of the year due to a drop in serotonin, which is mediated by the serotonin transporter protein (SERT), according to a longitudinal PET study presented Monday in Berlin during the Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

The placard project at Spectrum Health Systems is a unique methodology developed by George Vallillee, manager of Radiology Information Solutions, to improve the fidelity of the patient experience during a planned downtime or system disruption.  The project was proposed and initiated by Vallillee, and largely driven by teams whose input was mainly intellectual collateral, drawn from daily workflows, and drawn from the radiology system used throughout Spectrum. Since the rollout of the program, it has been tested and updated regularly to make further improvements in efficiency. Deemed a success by health system executives, the placard program has become a permanent part of Spectrum Health Systems communication plan.