Whitney Palmer

The Renaissance of the RIS

Published on the Nov. 27, 2012, DiagnosticImaging.com website

By Whitney L.J. Howell

CHICAGO — For several years, radiology has largely considered RIS to be a technology that has reached its limits. But the light of development is once again shining on this workhorse tool. And, according to industry experts, even more advancements are coming.

“Today’s RIS doesn’t handle your advanced workflow well,” said Paul Nagy, PhD, director of quality in Johns Hopkins University’s radiology department. “But, there’s a renaissance of functionality coming for the RIS that wasn’t there before. An increasing number of vendors are beginning to develop new RIS systems.”

In the future, he said, your RIS will not only be able to handle advanced work flow, but it will also provide capabilities for peer review, second opinions, discrepancy reporting, and notifications for when patients return for follow-up visits.

The search function in your RIS will also likely improve. Currently, it can take up to 10 seconds for the system to retrieve requested work lists. Commercial vendors are now working to make data retrieval with your RIS even easier, he said.

“It will be Google meets the RIS,” Nagy said. “The ability will be to search quickly — instantly. It’s a great idea of indexing all this patient information and having the data at your fingertips. Such powerful search tools don’t exist in traditional RIS, but it’s coming and will spread throughout the industry.”

To read the remainder of the article at its original location: http://www.diagnosticimaging.com/conference-reports/rsna2012/content/article/113619/2116292

December 5, 2012 - Posted by wjpalmer | Healthcare | advancements to RIS, increasing speed of RIS, Paul Nagy PhD, radiology information system, Renaissance of the RIS, RIS, RIS and advanced work flow, RIS and discrepancy reporting, RIS and electronic health record integration, RIS and peer review, RIS and second opinions, RIS and smartphone technology