Dear AuntMinnie Member,
The explosion of healthcare informatics technology has created a mountain of digital data at imaging facilities that have adopted PACS, RIS, and similar technologies. But if you're not mining this data, you're not getting the most out of your IT investment.
That's the word from a new article we're featuring this week in our Healthcare IT Digital Community by staff writer Wayne Forrest. The story profiles a pair of studies that used data mining techniques to assess key metrics of facility performance, such as referral patterns, report turnaround times, and other factors.
In the first study, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston used a natural language processing program -- which analyzes digital data for commonly used words -- to analyze their radiology database. They wanted to find out how well the program performed in classifying radiology reports.
The second study, also by MGH researchers, looked at whether a commercially available data mining application could be used to assess the appropriateness of imaging tests ordered by referring physicians. Get the rest of the details by clicking here, or visit our Healthcare IT Digital Community at healthcareit.auntminnie.com.
In other news, we take a look at a new report by researchers from the University of Texas in Galveston on the relationship between gadolinium-based contrast media and nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF).
In the study, the group wanted to see if there were other factors besides just gadolinium involved in whether patients developed NSF, a debilitating and sometimes fatal disease. They indeed found several factors besides contrast formulation that could be linked to NSF reactions.
Get the rest of the story -- and learn why the group has decided to follow stricter guidelines for gadolinium use than those recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration -- by clicking here, or visit our MRI Digital Community at mri.auntminnie.com.
