Akumin will install Philips’ Radiology Operations Command Center to enhance workflow and monitor scanner performance at its outpatient diagnostic imaging centers.

Designed to centralize, virtualize, and standardize network-wide imaging operations, Philips’ Radiology Operations Command Center enables technologists, radiologists and imaging operations teams to work together and share insights across multiple sites.

Akumin, which operates 130 centers in seven states, intends to use the solution and work with Philips to create clinical standards for its MR and CT imaging modalities. "The Philips Radiology Operations Command Center, or ROCC, allows customers to leverage the imaging skills of their more experienced technologists across their geographically distributed locations. With ROCC's telepresence capability, training of less experienced technologists will be enhanced and should permit the reduction in the overall training time of junior technologists by enabling the help they need real-time, while providing service to their patients," Matthew Bierbaum, senior director of ventures business at Philips, told HCB News.
Best-practice clinical standards for MR and CT will provide Akumin with a consistent approach for imaging procedures across its platform and centralized support that can be tailored to the individual clinical needs of each of its imaging centers.

The Radiology Operations Command Center allows technologists and radiologists to communicate through a real-time "virtual" telepresence in any connected MR or CT console room to ensure images are acquired correctly the first time. It also centrally monitors every MR and CT scanner in a network from a single location, and orchestrates workflows to continue services, increase enterprise-wide radiology productivity, reduce issues related to image quality and expand access to advanced MR- and CT-based scanning.

"Other benefits to this should be the improvement on overall image quality by reducing repeats and recalls, standardizing imaging procedures, and by extending patient access to the more complex and less-commonly performed procedures across locations," said Bierbaum.

The vendor-agnostic solution is the latest addition to Philips’ end-to-end Radiology Workflow Suite, which is designed to ensure clinical and operational efficiency in all phases of the diagnostic process. It also includes Patient Management for scheduling and preparation, Collaboration Live, MR Smart Workflow and Radiology Imaging Suite for image acquisition, Workflow Orchestrator and Advanced Visualization Workspace – IntelliSpace Portal for image and data interpretation, and Enterprise Performance Suite for follow-up care.

The Radiology Operations Command Center currently supports only MR and CT scanners.

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