Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Health information systems firm Cerner's move to buy Siemens Healthcare's IT business late Tuesday was no run-of-the mill acquisition of a plucky start-up; it was more like the high-profile marriage of a global power couple.
To what end? Siemens books a cool $1.3 billion in cash in the deal, while Cerner gets Siemens' Soarian Financials and a huge installed base for rolling out new products. Cerner said it needs the market share of the massive combined firm to leverage the economies of scale for its supersized R&D investments to come. Is this the way to corner a healthcare market in the 2020s? Time will tell. In the meantime, click here for our breaking news coverage of the sale.
Hottest IRC yet
Halfway around the world in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, organizers of the International Congress of Radiology (ICR) are going all out to boost their numbers too. The International Society of Radiology has supersized its September program with 13 subspecialty sessions running concurrently in 13 auditoriums. The biggest ICR yet will feature more than 200 speakers and 400 abstracts -- and, they hope, more than 5,000 attendees. Should you be one of them? Find out here, or visit our AuntMinnie Middle East section.
MRI for back pain
Back in North America, using MRI to diagnose back pain can be a pain in the lower vertebrae. It seems everybody wants one of the expensive scans, but not everybody should have one. The Ontario government in Canada instituted new policies to limit the scans to appropriate circumstances. See how that experiment turned out by clicking here, or visit our MRI Digital Community.
Implementing iterative recon
Finally, iterative reconstruction holds huge potential benefits -- still largely untapped -- in reduced CT dose and improved image quality. But how do you implement iterative reconstruction intelligently in a department equipped with a wide array of scanners and radiologists with a wide array of opinions? Hint: You don't just dial down your mAs by 30% and call it a day. For helpful hints from a master, click here, or visit the CT Digital Community.
