Dose Management

There has been an increase in public awareness around patient radiation exposure, due to media attention as well as the widely-promoted Image Gently® and Image Wisely® campaigns. Several states passed legislation requiring tracking of radiation dose and recently the Joint Commission released new requirements for monitoring and recording patient exposure. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association's Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA) continues its dose reduction effort with the approval of MITA Smart Dose, a standard that offers healthcare providers an additional tool to optimize and manage dose in CT scanning.

Improving dose management starts with a strategy.

 

The Dose Excellence Program provides insights and recommendations on integrating your leadership, practices and technologies into an effective, high-performance radiation management program. By comparing your current performance against industry guidelines and best/better practices, we can help you balance your dose management priorities throughout your hospital or across your entire healthcare system.

This comprehensive CT approach provides a starting point for radiation management program implementation:

• Developed using industry guidelines, direct observations of best/better practices and GE-sponsored research
• Consists of 87 elements along three dimensions of dose management: Leadership, Practices and Technology
• Completed through an on-site interview process based on input provided by your staff

 

One solution with integrated radiation and contrast dose management across all your radiation emitting medical devices.

 

DoseWatch is a enterprise-wide dose management solution designed to automatically collect and analyze patient radiation and iodine exposure across multi-facility, multi-modality, and multi-vendor imaging environments.¹

 

DoseWatch Explore Overview

 

DoseWatch Explore is a web-based, cloud deployed, introductory dose management software to track, analyze and report practice-level data for GE CT systems. This software collects radiation dose data1 directly from your GE CT scanner, then summarizes and presents the data via a web application.

 

With this introductory offering you can start to make initial improvements around dose management to help drive changes in your organization that will ultimately improve patient care with respect to radiation doses.

 

Smart Dose technologies help you reduce patient exposures.

 

Intelligent technology designed to help you acquire high-quality images using lower doses of radiation, contributing to more accurate diagnoses and lower exposures for patients.

 

Dose Management Education to Help Meet Joint Commission Guidelines

 

By July 2015, hospitals and critical access hospitals must meet the Joint Commission's revised guidelines around safety training for imaging professionals. GE Healthcare educational offerings on dose management and radiation safety concepts will support advancement of staff knowledge and practices around radiation dose management to help you achieve the clinical goals of the Joint Commission guidelines and develop a strong dose management culture.

 

Dose Management Education - Online, Onsite, and Consultative

 

GE Healthcare educational offerings include online, onsite and consultative programs to build the foundational knowledge to help clinicians understand the importance of radiation safety and dose management, covering such issues as:

 

• How does diagnostic imaging equipment work?
• What are the measures of dose?
• How are dose levels calibrated?
   

With this foundational knowledge, clinicians can more effectively answer the questions:
 

• How can changing dose level and image parameters impact dose and image quality?
• How can I image with less variance?
   

The Dose Excellence Program - Accelerate Cultural Change

 

The Dose Excellence Program is a coordinated program of consulting and educational services to help you accelerate improvement, from measuring and tracking radiation dose to managing it. Our experts will help you create a dose team, and customize a multi-step plan aimed at reducing variation, managing risk, streamlining reporting, and enabling quality imaging at the lowest dose possible.

At GE Healthcare we never stop working to maximize the benefits and clarity that medical imaging can bring to patient care. By seeking answers to the questions and challenges related to radiation exposure, we're using every possible resource - from technology to education to industry partnerships - to give providers the tools they need to achieve quality imaging outcomes at the lowest possible dose.

 

Learn more about Dose Management:

GE's 3rd annual dose and contrast management workshops had the honor to have several early adopters to share what can be the outcomes of a comprehensive approach aiming at optimizing radiation dose and contrast media utilization, as well as dose management in PET/CT.

ASiR, Veo, ASiR-V, DoseWatch, and Snapshot are trademarks of General Electric Company. GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric Company. GE Medical Systems, Inc., doing business as GE Healthcare.

 

Image Gently is a registered trademark of the Society for Pediatric Radiology, American College of Radiology,  American Society for Radiologic Technologists, and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. Image Wisely is a registered  trademark of  the American College of Radiology, Radiological Society of North America, American Society of Radiological Technologists and American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

 

1. Contrast Data Mgmt. module collects contrast data automatically for class 4 integrated injectors for GE Healthcare CT scanners only and is available for manual entry for other modalities connected to DoseWatch with the Contrast Data Management Module. Dose tracking for Nuclear Medicine is available for PET, PET/CT for single injection procedures only.
   
   
   
2. Not all Smart Technologies are available on all products. Ask a GE Healthcare sales representative for details.