How Mobile Apps Empower Radiologists

According to a study presented at the SIIM Annual Meeting held in the month of May, an innovative mobile phone application can improve the efficiency of interaction between the hospital staff and the radiologists, thus resulting in better quality of healthcare provision.

This application, called RadPhone, has been specifically designed by the researchers at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for the purpose of improving the communication so that cases can be discussed more efficiently and precious time can be saved. The app is extreme easy to operate. It allows the direct transfer of contact information on the smartphones. 

The application is compatible with all of the major mobile phones and has the option of auto-updates. It automatically organizes the contact information based on the study type, hospital site and time of day. Clinicians have the facility to dial up the radiologists from within the app for fast communication. The application became immensely popular within a year after its introduction having been accessed over 5,500 times by around 570 users/devices. 

The users’ feedback validated the app’s efficacy for faster communication. People reported it to be highly beneficial for finding the right radiologist and for contacting him/her immediately. On an average, a single user used the app more than 10 times. Ever since the introduction of tis innovation, the dependency on other means of communication has reported to have grown significantly lesser than before mainly because it has simplified the whole process of interaction between the radiologists and the hospital staff.