Merge Healthcare: interview with Senior Vice-President Beth Frost Johnson

Monday, 29 November 1999 19:00 |

Merge Healthcare will show Fusion RIS/PACS MX. Released this Spring, it brings positive ROI for imaging businesses and a uniquely optimized workspace for radiologists.

Merge take the initiative with Fusion RIS/PACS MX^TM at RSNA

Q: What products, updates or innovations are you announcing or launching at RSNA?

Merge Healthcare will show Fusion RIS/PACS MX^TM. Released this Spring, it brings positive ROI for imaging businesses and a uniquely optimized workspace for radiologists. Beyond simple interfacing of RIS and PACS, this single business and clinical application delivers exam-driven imaging workflow, user-customized worklist management, a patient master jacket for single-source patient information access, advanced visualization, point-and-click to relevant priors, hanging protocols, interrupt sessions, instant messaging and embedded dictation and document management, as well as practice analysis tools and a referring practice portal.

We will show works-in-progress of Fusion RIS/PACS MX^TM (version 3.0) which uses platform technology to automatically launch the right clinical application for viewing each study. Mammography, PET/CT and orthopedic reading can proceed seamlessly within workflow. Fusion PACS MX also adds new step-through viewing protocols, ability to save annotations and measurements as part of the image, and expanded keyboard mappings, plus native 64-bit processing to load tens of thousands of images simultaneously.

Attendees can see Merge Mammo^TM, Merge PET/CT^TM, and Merge Ortho^TM -- workflow-integrated in Fusion PACS MX and as stand-alone clinical applications. Additionally, we'll show the newest in eFilm Workstation, debut a works-in-progress of eFilm RIS/PACS, show our newest Fusion RIS MX solution, and highlight both Fusion PACS GL and Fusion RIS GL which meet needs of organizations outside the US.

Q: What are the benefits of using your product?

Merge's solutions help imaging centers, small and mid-sized hospitals and physician practices realize a positive return on investment. Our technology helps enhance workflow, increase productivity, improve clinical capabilities, improve customer satisfaction and provide market positioning/expansion opportunities. Our PACS, RIS and RIS/PACS solutions not only handle multiple modalities, but also support integrated workflow for specialty clinical applications.

Radiologists can customize their use of numerous features to enhance clinical viewing and improve reading speed. We help organizations move to virtually filmless and paperless environments with offerings such as our referring practice portal enabling web-based access to images and reports. Many of our clients use our ractice Analysis module to analyze key data points, set benchmarks and monitor improvements designed to reduce costs, improve customer service, and the like.

Q: What are you hoping to achieve from this year's RSNA?

We want to help organizations understand the power and value of measuring ROI when evaluating imaging informatics solutions. Working with prospective customers, we provide our staff's expertise to help map workflow according to an individual organization's needs. Using case studies and software to process numerous site-specific data variables, we perform in-depth ROI analysis to help demonstrate exactly how much each individual customer could expect to realize from a well-planned RIS/PACS deployment. Many customers report substantial return on investment based on almost-immediate impact of systems on productivity, workflow, and labor content.

Q: What key messages do you have for RSNA attendees?

Unlike large health systems, smaller entities often have limited IT staffing and budget. Many have multiple locations, requiring distributed workflow to ensure efficiency. Physician practices may want to offer basic imaging, and thus, do not require monolithic solutions.

For these organizations, a pressing need exists for an imaging informatics solution that can scale to fit current requirements -- from IT, clinical and operational perspectives -- and also grow with the organization as needs change.

Be prudent when evaluating a RIS/PACS system. Don't overlook feature/function comparisons, but keep your eye on the ball of the big-picture: What are you trying to achieve from an organizational perspective? How can you use technology and think-outside-the-box to achieve clinical, operational and financial success?

Q: How do you see the year ahead in clinical and business terms?

Imaging organizations will see continued need to embrace digital workflow as a way to combat market pressures on reimbursement and increased competition. Organizations will seek new opportunities to optimize productivity among radiologists (their most expensive resource).

Company profile

Merge Healthcare is a market leader in the development and delivery of medical imaging and information management software and services. Our innovative software solutions use leading-edge imaging software technologies that accelerate market delivery for our OEM customers, while our end-user solutions improve our customers' productivity and enhance the quality of patient care they provide. accelerating productivity for radiology departments and specialty practices, imaging centers and hospitals.

By combining sophisticated RIS, PACS, advanced visualization and clinical imaging applications, Merge Healthcare delivers integrated end-to-end software solutions and professional services that transform the way our customers interact with referring physicians, manage their workflow, position their businesses in their markets and deliver imaging and information services to their customers. For additional information, visit www.mergehealthcare.com.

Merge products on Medicexchange