Editorial

Dear readers, In the daily life of the leader of a medical imaging department, we are called on to wear many different hats: that of problem-solver, manager, scientist, clinical expert, and often, IT specialist. As is well known, radiology is a discipline that is steeped in fast-paced, highly effective, though often challenging new technology, which is speeding developments in patient care, but demanding...

Association News

Taking place this year in the winter ski resort of Schladming, Austria, from January 14 – 16 2012, the annual MIR winter course programme will be interactive and informative, and build a practical skill set over a three-day period. The aim of this course is that each delegate will leave with new insights and practical solutions they can implement immediately. Two trainers from "Inspire Change" will expl...

Taking place in Pisa, Italy, from June 27 – 30, the annual CARS congress is the yearly occasion where medicine and technology meet to present and discuss the key innovations that shape modern medicine on a worldwide basis. As is traditional, the ISCAS, EuroPACS, CAR, CAD and CMI societies will join CARS holding their own meetings are part of this large event. The congress will also be part of the Bioengi...

The Cardiovascular and Interventional Society of Europe have announced that applications for the CIRSE Foundation 2012 education grants will be possible until March 1st, 2012. Applicants are asked to send all documents required to [email protected]. Late applications will not be accepted. The purpose of the education grant is to advance training and education in interventional radiology. The grants...

IHE Europe today counts national initiatives in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. A national IHE initiative promotes, supports and implements IHE activities within the respective country, and often at the regional level within the country. National IHE initiatives also assume the responsibility to represent the needs and requirements of th...

On November 8, a reception of the Alliance for MRI was jointly hosted by MEP Elisabeth Morin-Chartier and MEP Sylvana Rapti at the European Parliament. Since the adoption of the European Commission proposal for a new EMF-Directive in June 2011, it has become clear from the discussions in Council that there is opposition from a number of member states to the proposed derogation for MRI from the limit values...

Cover Story

Technological advances have created great opportunities for society to develop new products and services, and to communicate and share data. A tremendous amount of ubiquitous computational power and online services are used every day as a normal commodity. These new facilities allow data storage and exchange of information anytime and anywhere, at high speed. In recent years, cloud computing is the new ter...

As the global healthcare landscape undergoes monumental change, healthcare IT is becoming a primary enabler of collaboration and cost management. Medical imaging, particularly the ability to move imaged data to the cloud, will create an opportunity for integration of existing technology into a new paradigm. Technological advances, such as the move to digital rather than analogue, are changing medical imagi...

With decreasing healthcare reimbursement and increasing economic uncertainty, there is a growing trend for hospitals to opt for a zero capital expenditure, managed service model with the purchase of IT systems in healthcare. As the application of managed service models emerges in the PACS market, it paves the way for cloud technology to finally have a significant impact in medical imaging. Managed servic...

Canada is implementing a network of large data repositories designed to store all diagnostic imaging studies generated in hospitals and clinics across the country. There will be 18 such storage units covering all provinces, called DI-r (Digital Images Repositories). The goal of this project is to make all imaging studies available to healthcare professionals, wherever they are, increase efficiency and decr...

Introduction The technological revolution that took place in radiology departments across the globe was first made easier by the implementation of viable Radiology Information Systems, followed by Picture Archiving and Communication Systems, while the DICOM standard was introduced in 1985 to help users communicate. By the end of the century, DICOM had become a matter of course for dealing with medical image...

Tech Horizons

Multimodality imaging is widely considered to involve the incorporation of two or more imaging modalities, usually within the setting of a single examination using, for example, dual- or triple-labelled optical or nuclear medicine "reporter" agents or by performing ultrasound or optical studies within the MR, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), or x-ray computed tomography (CT) environment....

Patient Safety

Please tell us how you became interested in the study and promotion of radiation safety. I am a cardiologist and a Senior Medical Researcher for the Italian National Research Council at the Institute of Clinical Physiology in Pisa. I am a clinical cardiologist with experience in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), database and epidemiological studies. In the last ten years our institute and its present director,...

Despite the widespread use and proven efficacy of ultrasound (US) contrast media in the adult population, as showed in Table 1 (see pg. 39), contrast-enhanced US (CEUS) has not achieved the same level of diffusion in the paediatric population. The rare reports in the scientific literature denote their sporadic and experimental use, most likely in off-label use. Only Levovist® (Bayer-Schering Pharma AG, Ge...

Management Matters

Healthcare teams naturally strive to provide patients with the most effective treatments, resulting in the best possible clinical outcomes. There are however, inevitable budgetary limits to which treatments and procedures can be made available. The economic impact of clinical decisions should therefore always be considered, especially as new technologies become available and costs rise. This is as true for...

Country Focus: Medical Imaging in Sweden

This edition's Hot Topics series looks to Sweden to find out what is going on in the field of research into the justification of contrast media in high-risk patients. Having studied with the inventor of non-ionic contrast media, Prof. Torsten Almén, who later collaborated with GE Healthcare, as well as Profs. Sundgren and Leander are carrying on this work by focusing on patient safety. Here they tell us w...

Agenda

This year's DFth edition of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting both celebrated the continuing drive for innovation and novel ways to provide faster, sharper and safer medical imaging exams, as well as reminding its audience that in the face of anticipated and hotly debated cuts to the health system in the United States, belt tightening looms large. This...

12 – 14 MIR Winter CourseSchladming, Austriawww.mir-online.org 16 – 18 Bristol MRI 2012Bristol, UKwww.jcaseminars.com 18 – 19 IT @ Networking 2012Brussels, Belgiumwww.itandnetworking.org   01 – 05 European Congres...


No comment