I made it to Chicago without much difficulty. As a matter of fact, Delta got me here 10 minutes early, and didn't even lose my bag! Not bad for the busiest travel day of the year.
I have yet to attend an educational session, but I'm headed straight to the Cardiac MR talk as soon as I finish this little entry.
One major change I've seen at RSNA is literally around my neck; the badges now have RFID tags, which lets the powers that be do some sort of monitoring of the attendees. No doubt this information will be used for proper ends, such as making sure that we actually do attend the educational stuff for which we are requesting credit. Personally, I'm worried that GE is using the tags to locate me when their snipers are in position. Nah, that would be too easy.
So far, I've had a quick look at the Philips Precedence SPECT/CT scanner. The darn thing is huge, and I'm not sure it will fit the room where it would need to go. I'll see the Siemens Symbia in detail on Wednesday, but I already know it's considerably smaller.
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I stopped in at Amicas for a brief chat, and got to see the latest implementation of RadStream, the critical results software. It is very well done, and solves a lot of reporting problems we have at most hospitals. I've gone from a skeptic to a true believer on this one. My real appointment with Amicas is on Tuesday, so I'll have more to report then.
I wandered by the Dynamic Imaging booth, noting with sadness that this is the last time it will be a separate installation. I had a chance to talk with several of my friends, who now sport GE badges. I didn't see any weapons in view, so I accepted the invitation to see some of their latest and greatest stuff. Now, I'm not going to do anyone's product justice in my RSNA reports, since I'm going to try to write them on the fly as it were. But I can tell you that their version 3.7 has some great new stuff. There is a PET/CT reading module that is really well done, basically one of the best implementations of such software I have seen, and I can't wait to get my hands on it at our GE/Centricity site. There has also been improvements in the hanging protocol setup, and there are new overlay options that allow, for example, more optimal display of MR Spectroscopy. I even saw a peek of I5 in alpha form, which uses the same viewer, but tries to do what Agfa did on the information screen, i.e., provide all important info at a glance. They even have a "Coverflow" like display of image series. Frankly, this prototype was a little "busy" for me, but they are on the right track.
As for the integration of DI products with GE, this is still in flux, but DI promised me that they will give me a letter to post that will outline the approach they will take. I know what I'd like them to say, but..... Actually, the fellow in charge of integration of the two product lines was sitting at the table, listening to me wax poetic (that means babble) about the joys of Centricity, and especially Centricity Web. I get the feeling the GE brass hasn't a clue about some of the problems I deal with daily with respect (not) to their products. Now they do.
I've been here at McCormack for about four hours now, and I've met about two dozen folks that read my blog. Many of them had never met me before, and I hope they weren't too disappointed. Frankly, it always surprises me that anyone reads this thing. I'm just posting what I see, filtered through my biased keyboarding fingers. Really, if I've made someone think, or at least laugh, then I've done my job. If the PACS industry is hanging on my every word, well....no one would be more surprised than me.
More to come from cold, cold Chicago!
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