Home office technology for radiologists is nothing new, but COVID-19 has had an impact on how people working in the radiology field perform their daily tasks.
While the overall radiology volume has declined as many facilities cut back on elective procedures, the volume of chest X-rays has spiked as images of the lungs help determine the severity of the sickness caused by COVID-19. Furthermore, as the disease is transmitted through airborne droplets, the workplace has become unsafe, which has pushed more and more employees into work-from-home situations.
The pandemic has helped put teleradiology services in the limelight. According to an article in Radiology Today, “healthcare systems are adjusting to handling more radiology outside of healthcare facilities.” Furthermore, the article points out that many major healthcare organizations, including Emory University School of Medicine and New York University Langone Health and other major hospitals, are “making an effort to allow radiologists to work from home.”
The Right Technology
It has become critical for these work-from-home healthcare professionals to connect to the right technology, which includes teleradiology. Armed with a laptop and the right teleradiology and PACS services, the work-from-home scenario becomes an effective model.
But what if the PACS doesn’t communicate well outside of the department in which it resides? This is a problem that predates the pandemic. Fortunately, cloud-based technologies exist that give healthcare professionals the leverage they need to work from home.
The best vendors of cloud-based PACS solutions take care of all the upgrades and maintenance, and because the servers and other hardware are offsite, there is no problem with it taking up real estate in your facility.
One of the biggest advantages of using these cloud-based technologies is that you no longer have roadblocks in the way of accessing images, due mostly to vendor neutral archiving that is part of some of the more robust cloud-based solutions.
Choosing the Right Vendor
Radiology professionals have many options in vendors, so it might be difficult to ascertain which one is going to be the most beneficial. Here are some options to look for as you make your decision:
- Browser agnostic viewer
- Fully hosted PACS
- Advanced logical expression
- Modality worklist
- Structured reporting
- Software non-obsolescence
- On-site diagnostic workstation
- DICOM data coercion
- HL7 ORU interface
When you partner with OffSite Image Management, you get all of the above and much more. Everyone is looking for stability today and that’s what we give our customers with reliable performance and guaranteed uptime.
Contact us today and find out more about how we can keep your workers connected, even if they’re not on site.