MedCurrent Corporation unveils newest version of clinical decision support solution for medical imaging

Toronto, ON -  Nov. 11, 2015. MedCurrent Corporation will release MedCurrent CDS Version 3.0, a powerful radiology decision support system designed to meet and exceed the requirements of the CMS mandate, at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting in Chicago, November 29 to December 3, 2015.

The newest version of the company’s clinical decision support (CDS) system streamlines efficiency for radiology departments and imaging centers. Updated interfaces are designed to enhance workflow while also improving physician adoption and compliance.  MedCurrent CDS 3.0 provides significantly deeper data analytics functionality to measure the system’s effectiveness and drive improvement initiatives.  It’s updated Authoring Studio greatly simplifies the process of customizing rules to meet local medical practice patterns.

CDS software uses Appropriate Use Criteria (rule sets) to analyze and rank the appropriateness of a provider’s order for a diagnostic imaging exam. The software will then provide the provider with feedback as to whether they should consider ordering a more appropriate procedure, as well as additional information including the urgency of obtaining the study, how much radiation it will expose the patient to, how expensive it is and very importantly, whether it has already been performed recently. In addition to meeting the mandate, research has demonstrated the ability of CDS to reduce the number of inappropriate exams, thereby improving quality, reducing costs and reducing unnecessary exposure to radiation.  Combined, these factors amount to an enhanced patient experience and improved clinical and operational efficiencies.

"Organizations should consider their immediate need to adopt a system as part of an overall enterprise-wide CDS strategy. Our clients are seeing significant changes that are leading to real dollar savings," said Stephen Herman, MD, MedCurrent’s chief medical officer. "Regardless of the mandate, this is the right business decision for today. Beyond this, the future will likely see CDS regulatory mandates extend beyond radiology. MedCurrent 3.0 is a flexible, enterprise-enabled platform for any referring service that could benefit from a CDS, such as lab or cardiology.”

Many radiology departments receives a significant percentage of orders from outside their hospital EMR/CPOE and therefore should factor in requirements such as integration with multiple disparate EHRs, CPOEs and scheduling systems, Herman said.  To ensure a localized CDS implementation, Herman elaborates that “a fully functional CDS system should include both tools to allow for rule localization to suit specific local practice patterns and the capacity to incorporate multiple rule sets for different ordering needs, such as lab, cardiology, and oncology. This will set the stage for system evolution over time to achieve enterprise-wide operational efficiency.”

Research shows that the effective use of a CDS will require significant cultural shifts among physicians who order imaging studies. “Systems that are easy for physicians to use will be the gold standard,” Herman said, noting that radiology clinical decision support is one of the solutions that will be most shopped at RSNA 2015.

New features of MedCurrent CDS 3.0 include:

• improved interfaces that are clinically-intuitive and present relevant clinical information, such as duplicate procedures and patient history, at the time of order entry
• a new platform that enables two-way communication with the EMR, CPOE, scheduling and other aligned systems
• cross-workflow compatibility to send orders through fax or email and capacity for modular integration into PACS and RIS
• a user-friendly authoring studio to tailor Appropriateness Use Criteria (a requirement to be recognized by the CMS as a Provider-Led Entity), and to integrate rule sets from multiple clinical specialties (lab, cardiology, etc.)
• an enhanced, web-based analytics platform to help guide behavior change and identify outliers with easy report generation, including peer-to-peer comparisons and trend evaluations in ordering appropriateness by provider, modality, etc.

Keith Dreyer, DO, PhD, vice chair and associate professor of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and vice chair of the ACR Commission on Clinical Research and Information Technology stated the following in a July 2014 article in Radiology Business: “The concept of creating an environment where radiology provides value far beyond the interpretation of images is at the core of Imaging 3.0. Access to CDS will be critical for ordering physicians and providers to participate in the new payment models.”

MedCurrent will be at RSNA 2015 at booth #2972. Additional information is at  www.medcurrent.com.

About MedCurrent Corporation
Founded in 2005, MedCurrent was created with the goal of developing sophisticated software to improve medical practice – clinically, operationally and financially.  MedCurrent’s EMR-embedded, cloud-based workflow engine improves operational efficiencies, hastens user adoption, supports change management and provides rule authoring flexibility. Using MedCurrent for imaging services is the first step in developing an enterprise-wide strategy as clinical decision support is added for any physician-referred services.