KOM Networks and Digisonics Bring Reading Hospital Up To Speed

When Dr A. George Neubert, director of maternal fetal medicine, first came to Reading Hospital in 1995, he faced a medical reporting problem. The hospital in West Reading, Pennsylvania had no electronic system in place for reporting and archiving ultrasound findings. Reports had to be done manually and stored with image printouts in paper files.

With the help of Digisonics, an image management and reporting systems provider for echocardiography and obstetric ultrasound, and KOM NETWORKS, a storage management software provider, Neubert converted the manual reporting and archiving process into a completely electronic one. Using a digital imaging and optical storage solution, Reading Hospital was able to save time and money.

Neubert had Digisonic's obstetric reporting package integrated into the hospital's network. "That allowed us to transmit the data instantly from the ultrasound study to the work station and allowed me to generate the ultrasound report within a matter of minutes," said Neubert. "We significantly reduced our labour time and costs by implementing that system and moved from a two to three day turn-around-time to one that in many cases was two to three minutes."

In April 2000, Dr. Neubert added Digisonics's digital imaging and archiving system, which uses KOM Networks Optistorm optical storage management software, to their obstetric reporting package. He chose the combined Digisonics and KOM solution for its ease of installation and operation.

"Because most of the process is point and click, it's easy to learn. The whole software package is easy to operate," says Neubert.

Prior to this, for each ultrasound study a thermal print of the image would be made, physically cut and pasted onto a sheet and placed in the patient's chart. The images would have to be cut and pasted again, if there were a request for records, and taken to a photocopy store so a high-resolution copy could be made.

"Now we've eliminated all of that by moving all the images right to the digital archive," said Neubert. "When you create the patient's report you put the images with the report and then they're archived right there and if you want to go back and print the images you can do that."

"I think the real advantage for me is to now have all the images sit in one place," he said. "I can go right up to the work station and generate the report along with my impressions and recommendations immediately, he added."

"It's not very often that a new technology promises both efficiency in terms of its operation and therefore cost reduction, plus much better patient care," said Diana McSherry, president of Digisonics, about the combined solution. "All departments within hospitals want to go to digital records because of this ease and speed of access," she said.

Digisonics, www.digisonicsinc.com, is based out of Houston Texas and KOM NETWORKS, www.komnetworks.com, operates out of Kanata Ontario. For more information please visit their websites.

Source: Data Storage Connection