Royal Philips has announced the launch of Radiology Solutions, a fully integrated, consultative approach to enhance radiology practice management. Radiology Solutions comprises customized, data-driven practice management approaches that combine imaging systems, services, informatics and analytics to help radiology practices improve care delivery and reduce costs.

Making its debut at the 2015 Radiological Society of North America Annual Meeting (RSNA) in Chicago, Philips' Radiology Solutions will provide radiology practices the critical data insights needed to transform care practices to be more efficient and effective, shaping enhanced operational performance across the entire healthcare network.

"The healthcare industry, and radiology in particular, is sitting on vast amounts of operational data - such as imaging procedure settings and utilization - that is not being used to its full potential," said Mr Robert Cascella, CEO, Imaging Business Groups, Philips. "The future of imaging depends on the seamless integration between data and insights across multiple imaging modalities and medical systems, allowing for greater optimization. Closely collaborating with hospitals, like UW Medicine, we've created a solution that unifies data and unlocks actionable information to help influence and improve radiology practice management."

Philips' Radiology Solutions offers a comprehensive and scalable data-driven practice management platform that leverages its integrated suite of digital health technology capabilities and breadth of experience in healthcare.

Developed in close collaboration with hospitals, including UW Medicine, and powered by the technology of Philips' HealthSuite digital platform, this solution uses data intelligence to spotlight what radiologists need to transform their practices to improve patient care and workflows.

The solution can be tailored for radiology practices of all sizes and used with Philips imaging and informatics products as well as third party imaging systems, PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System) and RIS (Radiology Information System) systems.

"We know that optimizing access, quality, cost effectiveness and impact in a radiology practice brings tremendous value to the patient, the family and the entire health system. Rapid, continuous, optimization in a scalable way requires that large volumes of data are acquired and made visual in a way not previously possible," said Dr Norman Beauchamp, professor and chair of the Department of Radiology at UW Medicine. "That's why we were eager to collaborate with Philips on the development of a platform that takes an integrated approach across, and beyond, a radiology practice. Now we're able to use actionable insights from data to drive improvements, ultimately benefiting patients with higher-quality care."

Philips developed Radiology Solutions' data-driven practice management approach with critical input from hospitals to help practices adapt to continuous change and provide ongoing directional support for departmental decision making. Based on the data collected and analyzed from individual assessments, Philips develops a configured integrated solution for practice management which brings together all relevant data inputs for real-time analysis of operations. Philips' Radiology Solutions helps to improve departmental outcomes based on a hospital's or health systems' defined targets in operational and financial performance, and the patient experience. For example, UW Medicine has already identified targeted reductions in radiology exams durations of more than 20 percent.

Philips' Radiology Solutions drives automation in the identification of radiology follow-up recommendations and provides the insight to see which patients comply with medical recommendations. Since deploying Philips' Radiology Solutions, UW Medicine uncovered data analysis showing patient compliance to follow-up recommendations were below targets. This data-driven insight allows UW Medicine to identify ways to help its radiologists improve and increase its patient follow-up recommendations compliance.