The evolving healthcare landscape presents significant challenges for radiology departments around the world. As the demand for imaging services continues to grow at an unprecedented pace, many radiology administrators find themselves under immense pressure to maintain high-quality imaging standards, while managing resource limitations and overburdened staff. This increase in demand has made it more difficult to standardize imaging protocols, optimize workflow efficiency, and ensure consistency across locations. In an environment where time and resources are increasingly constrained, radiology departments are searching for innovative solutions that can streamline operations and enhance patient care.
Taking a holistic approach to address some of the top radiology challenges
Recognizing these challenges, Miungo, in Hanover, Germany, was founded with a clear vision: to leverage technology not just as a support function, but as the driving force behind operational efficiency and patient-centered care. From the beginning, Miungo aimed to integrate cutting-edge solutions into its radiology operations, ensuring that the latest advancements in imaging technology could be fully utilized to meet the growing demands of modern healthcare. By adopting GE HealthCare’s Imaging 360 platform—a comprehensive cloud-based system with data analytics—Miungo has taken its commitment to innovation even further, enabling the practice to optimize its imaging workflows, increase capacity, and standardize protocols across its multiple locations.
“We recognized early on that embracing technology was the key to overcoming industry challenges,” explained Deutsch. “By building a flexible, technology-driven system that incorporates remote services and data analytics, we have been able to deliver efficient, high-quality care despite constraints. And by doing so, we are effectively bridging the gap between limited resources and growing demands.”
Putting data to work to streamline operations
Imaging 360 offers a suite of tools that provide real-time monitoring and performance analytics, helping radiology service providers address challenges within radiology operations, such as facilitating protocol standardization and management across service locations, while optimizing workflows, resource allocation and throughput.
“We’re committed to supporting radiology practices like Miungo in their pursuit of improved patient care and operational efficiency,” said Rekha Ranganathan, senior vice president, general manager, Imaging Platforms and Digital Solutions at GE HealthCare. “With the power of digital tools like Imaging 360, we’re helping radiology departments streamline workflows and enhance imaging consistency across locations. Our goal is to provide clinicians with the insights and efficiencies they need to deliver exceptional imaging services and patient care.”
Achieving efficiencies in radiology operations with standardization
Standardizing imaging protocols in radiology operations ensures consistent imaging services across facilities, benefiting patients and referring physicians. As a growing imaging services provider, Miungo is committed to standardizing its processes to ensure uniformity of care and relies on Imaging 360 to standardize and manage its imaging protocols.
“Our commitment to standardized processes ensures uniformity of care. The Imaging 360 protocol management solution has been instrumental in achieving and maintaining consistency across all locations and enabling us to instantly implement updates and push out new protocols. It’s very helpful in managing the whole fleet,” Deutsch reported. “Looking at the data, we’ve saved about 120 hours of scan time over three months using standardized protocols.”
Miungo’s outcomes after implementing
Imaging 360, AIR™ Recon DL and MR Smart Subscription
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Decreased patient wait times from 4 days to 1 day |
Saved ~120 hours of scan time, by optimizing protocols over 3 months |
Using this radiology operations platform, imaging protocols can be standardized remotely, helping radiology staff to deliver consistent imaging across the department, reducing the likelihood of errors and the need for repeat exams. With a library of standardized imaging protocols used across the network, radiology providers can deliver uniform, high-quality patient care while optimizing operational efficiency and resource management.
Advancing clinical insights and the patient experience in MRI with AI
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an essential diagnostic tool in radiology that has revolutionized the field of medical imaging. However, as medical imaging continues to advance, the complexity of MRI workflows can continue to increase as well. Increasing MRI efficiency within radiology operations can have a significant impact on throughput as well as image quality.
As part of Miungo’s commitment to leveraging technology to deliver more patient-centered care, it expanded its capabilities in MRI with GE HealthCare’s advanced clinical application AIR™ Recon DL. Current developments in MRI software technology, such as this deep learning algorithm for MRI image reconstruction, enable faster MRI scan times and have the potential to significantly enhance image quality. Digital solutions and advanced clinical applications like these can offer Miungo’s radiology staff and referring physicians the clinical insights they need to inform confident diagnoses. Additionally, the faster scan times can enable increased scheduling capacity.
“[AIR™ Recon DL] has supported our focus on shorter examination times by delivering clearer images faster,” explained Deutsch. “This enhances, on the one hand, to help inform diagnostic accuracy, and on the other hand, it’s very valuable for the patient experience. Additionally, it allows us to manage our cases efficiently. Patients appreciate the shorter exam times, while the referring physicians are impressed with the enhanced image quality. In a timeframe of three months, the exams we performed increased from around 1,400 to roughly 2,000 exams. So, it’s quite a win-win-win for us.”
To further support its focus on patient-centered care and operational efficiency, Miungo has also integrated GE HealthCare’s MR Smart Subscription into its MRI operations. This subscription-based service allows Miungo to access regular software upgrades and advanced clinical tools, ensuring its MRI technology stays at the forefront of imaging advancements. With MR Smart Subscription, Miungo benefits from features that optimize image quality and scanning efficiency, helping reduce exam times while delivering precise diagnostic images. These software upgrades are a cost-effective solution to keep MRI services up-to-date with the latest advancements, supporting Miungo’s goal of high-quality, patient-centered care and without the need to continually invest in new hardware.
Optimizing resource allocation with remote capabilities
Remote capabilities allow radiology providers to access and manage imaging devices across various locations remotely, optimizing resources and ensuring that equipment is used efficiently and effectively. The Imaging 360 platform can be offered with remote access, supporting the sharing of expertise, best practices, training, and real-time, remote console control.* Remote capabilities have also allowed imaging service providers, like Miungo, to establish new flexible opportunities for radiology staff.
“We’ve established what we call a co-pilot system, where radiographers are operating remotely, managing and operating multiple scanners in different locations. This has helped us to build a quality cluster of highly qualified radiographers and helps us maintain our operability. It also offers our staff the flexibility of a four-day work week.”
Fulfilling the vision for advanced radiology operations
Driving efficiency in radiology operations requires a holistic approach that combines effective management practices with modern innovations and state-of-the-art technology. The success of Miungo is a testament to the transformative power of applying innovative solutions and data-driven decision-making to streamline radiology operations.
“The advantages enabled by the radiology operations software are helping us to fulfill our vision,” Deutsch explained. “In the end, this is quite simple, we are driven by passion for innovation and its our curiosity that keeps us future-ready. We are on a journey of constant renewal…use technology to reduce redundancies, and unnecessary workload and focus on the most important thing, your patients as well as providing patient-centered medicine. Our vision of leveraging technology and developing a network of radiology practices to provide patient-centered care, includes having highly standardized processes, and the same protocols across locations so we can deliver the same high-quality radiology services everywhere we grow.”
RELATED CONTENT
- Hear from Tobias Deutsch, MD, interviewed in a recent webinar, Taking a holistic approach to operational efficiency in radiology
- Learn more about streamlining your imaging operations with Imaging 360
DISCLAIMER
The results achieved by this facility may not be applicable to all institutions, and individual results may vary. This is provided for informational purposes only and its content does not constitute a representation or guarantee from GE HealthCare.
Not all products or features are available in all geographies. Check with your local GE HealthCare representative for availability in your country.
*Remote scanning and collaboration can be fulfilled by either nCommand Lite by IONIC Health or Digital Expert Access by GE HealthCare. Both solutions are 510k cleared and exclusively distributed by GE HealthCare. nCommand Lite by IONIC Health is not CE marked. Consult your sales representative for availability in your region.
