Radiation dose adds up when a young patient needs several CT scans, and sifting through the hospital data to evaluate the amount of dose administered can be difficult. GE Healthcare released its new data management system, DoseWatch Explore, yesterday to streamline that process.

The system leverages Microsoft’s cloud technology to collect information on radiation dose directly from GE CT scanners. The physicians can then use that data to quantify the amount of radiation dose and the data can then be used to modify subsequent procedures to ensure the lowest doses are being administered.

“Today, many health care providers don’t know what their radiation dose usage is, and DoseWatch Explore can make it very easy for clinicians to gain instant visibility to their practice-level dose data across their GE CT systems,” Agnes Berzsenyi, vice president and general manager of product management for global services at GE, told DOTmed News.”
“An application such as this has the potential to change a practice, in that it can summarize and present analysis on a large data set and provide automated alerts to management, making previously invisible data visible. For radiology administrators, there is a lot of useful information concerning utilization,” she added.

Hospitals must now comply with accreditation and regulatory requirements for radiation dose, including The Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance’s Smart Dose standards or XR 29. Physicians are looking for a way to test dose management without compromising image quality and DoseWatch Explore can assist them with that.

Early adopters used DoseWatch Explore to compare CT systems using GE’s ASiR dose reduction technology with systems that did not use the technology. They found that DoseWatch Explore was able to show that the dose levels of comparable protocols were 24 to 34 percent lower on the systems using ASiR than the systems without it.

“The customer’s reaction to this data was quite positive,” said Berzsenyi. “Our customers have expressed that an application such as this has the potential to change a practice, in that it can summarize and present analysis on a large data set and provide automated alerts to management.”

DoseWatch Explore is part of GE’s growing portfolio of dose management tools. Unlike GE’s core dose management solution, DoseWatch, DoseWatch Explore requires no additional information technology integration, infrastructure, or installation.

DoseWatch Explore is part of GE’s broader initiative called the Industrial Internet. The focus of the initiative is not on creating newer and smarter technology, but instead connecting clinicians with technology that provides accurate information and enables them to spend less time navigating through the system.

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