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.
Developing an effective dose management program takes time, resources and perseverance. There may be significant technical and cultural challenges to surmount. Among the range of issues to be considered:
- Are adult protocols being used on pediatric patients?
- Do my pediatric scans meet Image Gently recommendations?
- What scans are most frequently performed in the ED and what is the typical dose?
- How accurately are technologists centering patients in the CT?
- Is iterative reconstruction software being used appropriately in place of higher dose protocols?
- Do CT studies reflect ACR and AAPM dose guidelines?
- Is there a "frequently flyer" problem with CT scans in the ED?
- How do doses on older systems compare with newer scanners - do we need to upgrade?
- What size and age of patient are we typically imaging? Does the dose scale appropriately?
- How do we ensure identification of all sentinel event or reportable CV/IR studies?
- Are CT protocols using mA modulation to appropriately adjust dose and improve image quality?
Why Dose Management
Compliance with GE Healthcare
Dose Excellence
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.
High performance radiation management programs occur at the intersection of three dimensions.
Where do you begin? By looking at your current radiation dose management processes with the Dose Excellence Program.
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 Healthcare-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
The Dose Excellence Program focuses on measuring your current radiation dose practices using data and analytics to identify opportunities and focus your efforts on fixing errors and helping you establish a quality improvement plan to deliver uncompromised imaging.
Step 1: Measure
Start with the basics of measuring radiation dose and benchmarking your current dose management processes.
Learn more >>
Step 2: Manage
Now that you have access to radiation dose data, what do you do with it? Understand the data and analytics so you can reduce unnecessary radiation by helping to ensure protocols, procedures and best practices are followed.
Learn more >>
Step 3: Optimize
Build a quality improvement plan that enables end-to-end optimization to help your organization deliver just the right dose for the right clinical outcomes every time.
Learn more >>
DoseWatch™
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 Healthcare CT systems. This software collects radiation dose data1 directly from your GE Healthcare 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 may help improve patient care with respect to radiation doses.
Learn more about DoseWatch Explore >>
Smart Dose Technologies
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.
Computed Tomography
Our suite of intelligent CT tools are designed to support diagnostic confidence with lower levels of radiation2.
Over 47 million patients to date on more than 4,600 systems worldwide
ASiR™
Veo™
ASiR-V™
Exposure Control
3D mA modulation
Dynamic z-axis tracking
Organ dose modulation
SnapShot™ Pulse
SnapShot Freeze
Protocols
Adult and pediatric reference protocols
Color Coding for Kids
Procedure-based protocols
Awareness and Reporting
Pre-scan dose estimates
Dose Check
DICOM Radiation Dose Structured Reporting
Learn more about CT Smart Dose Technologies >>
Interventional
Optimize and personalize dose settings from the table-side, while maintaining the clinical details to help you make well-informed decisions.
Dose Awareness Solutions
Provides healthcare organizations insightful and comprehensive dose information and enables a proactive approach to radiation management through data and analytics. Learn more >>
Dose Efficient Technologies
Advanced technologies for interventional and cardiovascular suite designed to provide the image clarity you need while helping you keep dose as low as reasonably achievable. Learn more >>
Radiography and Fluoroscopy
Our R&F solutions are designed to help you do more with less-without compromising care. You'll find performance and productivity enhancing features on systems that deliver outstanding image quality with dose efficiency.
Precision RXi - compact and versatile remote-controlled R&F system to help address clinical needs.
Dose Education
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.
GE Healthcare's Commitment
GE Healthcare's commitment to Dose Management
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:
Dose Management Outcomes
PATIENT DOSE HISTORY
YOUR BEST DAY... EVERYDAY
PATIENTS ANSWERED
NO SWEAT EXECS
PASS THE AUDIT
PATIENT SIZE MATTERS
OPERATIONAL VISIBILITY
REFERRAL PROVIDER OF CHOICE
ECR Highlights
Your dose of ECR highlights
GE' Healthacre'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.
Listen to Dr. Elizabeth Parizel speaking about the possible outcomes of comprehensive radiation and contrast media management strategy.
Listen to Dr. Kris Van Der Moortele speaking how administering patient-specific contrast volume can help standardize workflows and image quality across patients.
Listen to Pr Mika Teras speaking what are the outcomes of implementing a PET/CT dose management strategy.
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.
- 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.
- Not all Smart Technologies are available on all products. Ask a GE Healthcare sales representative for details.