SALT LAKE CITY - The U.S. radiology information systems (RIS) marketplace has been a slow-growth sector for years, and is often considered to be mature, if not saturated. But that's not the case in imaging centers and small to mid-size hospitals, according to RIS and speech recognition provider ThinAir Data.
"The RIS market is very saturated at the top end, but there's an awful lot of solutions you can buy with a greater-than-$100,000 price tag that are serving larger institutions or large healthcare entities," said Scott Silverman, president, CEO, and CTO of the Los Angeles company. "But we're not finding the market anywhere near saturated for imaging centers and smaller hospitals and community medical centers, who certainly can't budget six figures for an information system."
ThinAir Data, formerly known as SkyBail Computing, is exhibiting for the second time at this year's Symposium for Computer Applications in Radiology. By offering speech recognition technology along with its RIS software, the firm believes it can offer cost-sensitive customers two systems for the price of one.
"For an institution that never had a budget for a RIS, they find they can take existing transcription funds and acquire both our RIS and speech recognition systems for the price of one," Silverman said. "We're finding a real sweet spot in the market in small to medium-sized hospitals, sites doing anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 exams a year. A good portion of those facilities don't seem to have full-blown RIS systems yet."
At SCAR, ThinAir Data is showcasing a number of enhancements to its SkyRIS product line. An Internet-enabled version of SkyRIS, SkyRIS.net, enables Web-based access to SkyRIS, including speech recognition capabilities, Silverman said. ThinAir Data is interfacing SkyRIS.net with ALI Technologies' UltraPACS software at the show.
"You could have a radiologist with Internet access bringing up images, with access to the radiology information system and speech recognition, and creating reports in real time remotely over the Internet," he said.
In addition to speech recognition capability, SkyRIS offers a full suite of RIS features, including capabilities such as patient and resource scheduling, and automatic distribution of reports, Silverman said.
"It can be used as a full stand-alone RIS without speech recognition," Silverman told AuntMinnie.com. "For folks that do want to use speech recognition, it's integrated into SkyRIS."
Configurations of SkyRIS include:
- SkyRIS Enterprise: targeted for sites that already have a RIS, but that need interface capabilities, including HL7 integration.
- SkyRIS Standalone: for facilities without a RIS that would like integrated RIS functionality and speech recognition for report creation.
- SkyRIS DR: for institutions already using teleradiology or PACS, but need DICOM, HL7, and SQL interface capabilities to use speech recognition and automated report routing and delivery for digital radiography studies.
In addition to its radiology-oriented product line, ThinAir also offers VoiceChart, an electronic medical record product for nonradiology physicians. Like SkyRIS, VoiceChart includes integrated speech recognition. SkyRIS electronically transfers reports directly into VoiceChart, allowing referring physicians to maintain a database of all of their reports in their system.
"That seems to be of use more to the private imaging centers, as opposed to the hospitals," Silverman said. "If you've got a large base of referrals out to the community, it's a good way to keep everyone and the information linked."
ThinAir Data's predecessor, SkyBail Computing, was formed in 1993, and began marketing its information systems and speech recognition technology to the radiology market in late 1996. The vendor was one of the first companies to sell IBM's now-defunct MedSpeak speech recognition product into the radiology market. Today, the company licenses a variety of speech recognition engines, he said.
A year ago, SkyBail Computing was acquired by an investor pool, and was renamed as ThinAir Data. The firm declined to provide installed base figures, although it does have key installations at Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital in San Antonio, TX, and Baylor Healthcare in Dallas, Silverman said. ThinAir distributes its products through a mix of direct sales and resellers.
By Erik L. Ridley
AuntMinnie.com staff writer
May 4, 2001
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