The Demonstration

Image courtesy of Dilbert.com

Hi, everyone. I see we have some folks here from Administration, and from IT, and even five or six radiologists. That's great. I was sent here by your EMR vendor to give you a look at the new RIS add-on, DoctorThingy. It's a nice piece of software that can be used in either RIS-driven or PACS-driven mode. We could probably run it both ways, but we don't recommend doing that. Why? Well, you might have some trouble synchronizing worklists, and some exams might just get read twice. We don't want that to happen, do we? So let's see how this looks.

Your overhead projector will only work in landscape mode, but we recommend using portrait mode. No, we can't turn the projector sideways, it's bolted to the ceiling, isn't it? Maybe you could all tip your heads to the left? No, no, I'm just kidding. But keep in mind that you would normally see this wonderful informational window stacked on your portrait monitor with another window below it. Of course, you could get one of those nice Barco 12 MegaPixel monitors and have room for lots of windows! Or you might need a fifth or a sixth monitor for our window, and your old PACS text window and your PowerScribe window. Oh, you don't have that yet? Oops.

Our early implementations of the DoctorThingy were PACS-driven.  That's probably because no one had invented RIS-driven workflow back then. But now most of our sites go RIS-driven. That means we replace your PACS worklist with our page that includes your worklists. And it will show you how many reports you have to sign, and let you do that without opening another app, and we know you hate opening other apps! When you select a patient, it shows everything you have in the EMR about him. Oh, yes, you can have as many worklists active as you wish. No, that won't bog down your page. Your PACS can't handle that? Well, that's a good reason to go RIS-driven, isn't it? Ha ha. Anyway, our RIS when teamed with DoctorThingy replaces your worklist completely. You can make any kind of worklist you want, using any criteria you can think of. What's that? You want just to search for a individual patient? Easy peasy! Here is the search window. You can search by name, date of birth, ID, and AARP number. Really? You want to search by modality? Or you want to go back and review the MRI's you've read in the last week? Hmmmmm. The DoctorThingy search window won't do that. Never has. But don't worry. If you minimize DoctorThingy and open CollosusSearch, you can find just about anything...like maybe all the patients with a certain astrological sign who had defagrams in months that contain the letter "R". Isn't that worth opening up another app to see? Oh. Forget what I said before about opening another program.

What's that? You need voice clips on the ER exams? Well, DoctorThingy 1.2.11.3 had voice-clips. You know, saving them as .WAV files and all. But we dropped that. No, we have no plans to put it back. Well, OK, I'll ask. You have voice-clips in your PACS viewer? That might work. If you can get to your PACS viewer text page. Oh, silly me, it will be hidden by the DoctorThingy window. But if you have a proper portrait monitor, you could still arrange things so you could see it after all. I think.

Oh, you want to know about workflow with your PACS? Oh, yes, we've integrated at another site to the same PACS. Yes, ONE other site. You'll be the second. But we really appreciate your help with beta-testing the system! Yes, the existing installation is in Nome, Alaska. Nome. N-O-M-E. Shall we go for a site visit? You all go on ahead, I'll meet you there in July. Since I haven't been there, I really don't know just exactly how this will work with your PACS. But it's really really powerful. Great software.

I know you guys want some kind of demo program you can play with. Sorry, but this nice demo you are seeing on the screen is straight from our HQ inside the NORAD mountain. It's only for the demonstrators like me. No, you can't have access to it. But your site already has the code. What? It isn't online yet? Well, once it is, you can probably play with it, if IT can set up a test environment for you. That shouldn't take too long, right? No more than a month or so. Because I'm told this project won't go live until April Fools Day, and that's almost three months from now! That's certainly enough time for you to iron out any and all difficulties presented by this wonderful software. IT people, do you know how it works? Are you all ready to get it going? Oh, well, you'll figure it out.

So don't worry! Just because you are being forced to use this untested integration of new software without adequate prep time which will completely upend the way you do your job shouldn't bother you! It will all work out. It always does. Just look at how well your PACS runs! On second thought...

If there are no further questions...