Welcome to the first installment of this year's Road to RSNA preview of the 2012 RSNA conference in Chicago. For the fourth year in a row, we're providing a modality-by-modality overview of the most important scientific sessions, poster presentations, and educational exhibits to serve as your guide to events at McCormick Place.
A variety of PACS educational opportunities await RSNA attendees this year, including research on mobile devices, image sharing, teleradiology, compression, quality assurance, disaster recovery, cloud computing, and more.
A number of radiology-related provisions were included recently in stage 2 of the U.S. government's meaningful use healthcare IT stimulus program, and Dr. Keith Dreyer, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital will discuss the topic during his Eugene P. Pendergrass New Horizons Lecture, titled the Future of Informatics: Meaningful Use and Beyond, on Monday, November 26 (1:30 p.m.-2:45 p.m., PS20C, Arie Crown Theater).
Mobile devices remain a sizzling hot topic, which no doubt inspired RSNA program planners to again devote a morning multisession course on Tuesday, November 27, to explore their evolving clinical utility and issues surrounding their use in medical imaging (8:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m., VSIN31, Room E351).
Those interested in career opportunities in PACS will no doubt find value in a multisession course on PACS as a Profession: Qualifications for Success, held in partnership with the American Society for Radiologic Technologists on Thursday, November 29 (2:20 p.m.-3:20 p.m., MSRT55, Room N230).
Refresher courses
This year's schedule will feature a range of PACS-related refresher courses, which are clustered at the beginning and end of the week.
Those interested in cloud computing will be pleased with the refresher course agenda on Sunday, November 25. First, attendees can learn about using Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) to get images to the cloud (11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m., ICII11, Room S501ABC). A primer on cloud computing for radiologists then follows in the afternoon (2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m., RC130, Room N226).
Monday morning kicks off with a refresher course on IT management for radiologists (8:30 a.m.-10:00 a.m., RC230, Room S403B). Also on Monday, two refresher courses, titled Practical Informatics for the Practicing Radiologist, will be held in conjunction with the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM). Part 1 will run from 10:30 a.m. to noon (ICII21, Room S501ABC), while part 2 will run from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (ICII22, Room S501ABC).
A course on meaningful use for radiology IT vendors also is scheduled for Monday afternoon, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (ICII23, Room S501ABC).
Moving ahead to Thursday afternoon, SIIM will also participate in a refresher/informatics course that explores next-generation infrastructure for medical imaging (4:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m., RC726, Room S102D).
See below for previews of PACS-related scientific papers and posters at this year's RSNA meeting. And also stay tuned for more radiology informatics coverage in our upcoming Healthcare Informatics and Advanced Visualization Road to RSNA sections.
To view the RSNA's listing of abstracts for this year's scientific and educational program, click here.
