Editorial

National health services, whether funded by government or by personal insurance schemes, are being strained by the exponential rise in cost, substantially due to the huge developments in diagnosis and treatment over the last few years. Cancer drug therapy in particular has made major strides in recent years with the promise of more individually tailored treatment protocols. The population is living ever lo...

Association News

CARS News - President andOrganiserWelcomeOver 1,000 Delegates at Recent CARS 2008 Congress Held over three days from June 25 until 28, 2008, this year’s congress proved the ongoing demand for its special focus on computer-assissted medicine. CARS 2008 in Barcelona was launched,giving special emphasis to the clinical impact of a computer assisted medicine. More than 1,000 participants from 49 coun...

EU News

On 22 April, the European Parliament adopted a report on the Commission's proposals for EU action on organ donation.The intitiative aims to improve cooperation between member states on the issue and make recommendations on the way forward.Reducing the organ and donor shortage is “the main challenge that EU Member States face with regard to organ transplantation”, found MEPs. They proposed a wide range...

The European Commission organised an "EU High-Level Conference on Mental Health", which took place on the 13 June 2008 in Brussels. The conference will be a follow-up to the consultation on the Commission's Green Paper on Mental Health of 2005. The conference focused on four themes: • Prevention of Suicide and Depression, • Mental health inYouth and Education, • Mental health inWork...

The eHealth 2008 conference,with the theme of ‘eHealth without frontiers’ was held in Slovenia between May 6-7, 2008.This is the sixth in a series of high-level eHealth conferences that have taken place since 2003, and the first held in one of Europe’s new Member States.These conferences are key dates in the eHealth annual policy awareness-raising agenda. The theme of ‘without frontiers’ wa...

Healthcare Product Comparison Chart

Contact ECRI Institute Europe, Weltech Centre Ridgeway, Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL7 2AA, United Kingdom [email protected] www.ecri.org.uk. ECRI Institute, a non-profit organisation, dedicates itself to bringing the discipline of applied scientific research in healthcare to uncover the best approaches to improving patient care. As pioneers in this science for nearly 40 years,ECRI Instit...

Cover Story: Cost-Effectiveness in the Imaging Department

Author ChrisWright Senior Lecturer University of Cumbria Cumbria, United Kingdom [email protected]. Maintenance of equipment post warranty is a major challenge to radiologymanagers. As one of the largest organisational costs, the need for efficient management is paramount.However, the level of complexity is often overwhelming. Service contracts are attractive because of their ease...

Author Dr. David Harvey Medical Connections Swansea Wales, United Kingdom [email protected] Since the introduction of PACS, vendors have gone to great lengths to ensure that the products they supply provide the users with the functionality they most need, from both a clinical and administrative perspective – and generally they succeed.However, no two hospitals are ever exactly ali...

Assessing Cost-Effectivenessin the Radiology DepartmentAuthors Helen Cole Imaging Cluster Manager Lizzy Bower Health Economist Centre for Evidencebased Purchasing London, UK [email protected] In September 2005, the Centre for Evidence- Based Purchasing (CEP) was created within the UK National Health Service (NHS) Purchasing and SupplyAgency (PASA), as the first key outcome of the Health...

Authors Osman Ratib Joris Heuberger Antoine Rosset Department of Medical Imaging and Information Sciences University Hospital of Geneva Geneva, Switzerland [email protected] Nowadays,most clinical decisions rely on imaging procedures where the diagnostic report generated by a radiologist is often incomplete without supporting images.Radiologists often have to generate additiona...

Healthcare Economics

Author Dr. Silvia Ondategui-Parra Associate Hospital Director Teknon Medical Center Barcelona, Spain Also, Adjunct Assistant Professor Boston University School of Medicine Boston, US [email protected] Radiologists may find the terms of quality control (QC), quality assurance (QA) and continuous quality improvement (CQI) confusing. In short, in radiology, QC involves r...

Features

Authors Dr. Burkhard Roessink Dr.Hugo Flaten Global Pharmacovigilance GE Healthcare Oslo, Norway [email protected] Nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) is a rare, but potentially serious, acquired systemic disease that has been associated with the use of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCA) including Omniscan (gadodiamide). It can be a painful and debilitating condition thatmay contr...

Authors Prof. Peter Lind Head Department of Nuclear Medicine & Endocrinology PET/CT Center Klagenfurt Klagenfurt, Austria Also, Dr. S. Eder Prof. H.J. Gallowitsch Dr. S. Kohlfürst Th. Kopema D.I. M. Weigelt K. Friesacher ISO 9001:2000 is a quality management system that promotes greater responsibility among staff, better use of time and resources, risk and failure manag...

Author Dr. Ian Arrowsmith Chief Terminologist UK Terminology Centre NHS Connecting for Health [email protected] The national deployment of Picture Archive & Communication Systems (PACS) and imaging information systems as part of the English National Programme for IT combined with the move towards a shared summary care health record brought about a compelling need for all imaging...

Imaging Leaders

Cardiovascular and Interventional Society of Europe (CIRSE) Interviewee: Prof. Jim Reekers Professor of Radiology and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital AMC, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands President Cardiolovascular and Interventional Society of Europe (CIRSE) [email protected] Please Give Us Some Background Information on Your Professional Achievements...

Industry News

Agfa HealthCare Awarded New Contract Agfa HealthCare has been awarded a new three-year contract with Premier Purchasing Partners, L.P., to provide film and medical imagers to the healthcare alliance's 2,000 member hospitals and 53,000 other alternate healthcare sites in the US. Effective September 1, 2008, this agreement adds to existing relations between Agfa HealthCare and Premier, namely Enterpr...

Country Focus:Ireland

Author: Frank Ahern Assistant Secretary Department of Health and Children Dublin, Ireland frank_ahern @health.irlgov. The Irish health system is a mix of both public and private institutions and funders. It is primarily taxfinanced and around 50% of the population has private health insurance. The Irish Health Service has recently come through a radical reform programme and is going throu...

Author: This profile is provided by the Faculty of Radio - logists in Ireland. A full version can be found on the website of the Faculty at: www.rcsi.ie The Faculty of Radiologists at the Royal College of Surgeons is the professional and academic body for clinical radiologists in Ireland. It offers specialist training and post-graduate examinations in radiology. The faculty's objectives a...

I Work as a Consultant Radiologist for a National Referral Centre. I am a consultant radiologist in St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, part of the St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG). SVHG is composed of a large university teaching hospital, a smaller teaching hospital and a private hospital. There are 850 beds in SVHG. The hospital is the national referral centre for a number of...

I am presently consultant radiologist and chairman of the department of radiology at the Mater University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. This is a large teaching hospital, and along with St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, and University College Dublin, is a constituent of the Dublin Academic Healthcare Centre. I am immediate past Dean of the Faculty of Radiologists, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. T...


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