As radiology administrators from across the United States gather at the annual American Healthcare Radiology Administrators (AHRA) conference, Bayer has announced an exploratory collaboration with Alara Imaging, Inc. This partnership is set to address a critical issue in the field of medical imaging: the variability and often excessive radiation doses administered during computed tomography (CT) scans.
Radiation doses from CT scans can vary widely between patients and institutions, not just in the U.S., but globally. Research has highlighted that many of these doses exceed what is necessary for effective imaging, presenting a modifiable health risk. Reducing these unnecessary doses through monitoring and feedback is a key goal of the collaboration.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have introduced new radiology patient safety electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) aimed at standardizing and monitoring CT scan performance to mitigate the risks associated with high radiation doses. Alara Imaging’s software plays a crucial role in this process by extracting and translating primary data elements from radiology electronic health records (EHRs) into the data needed for eCQM calculation and reporting.
As the CMS Measure Steward, Alara’s SOC II- and HIPAA-compliant software allows health systems to securely transfer data from EHRs, radiology information systems (RIS), and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). This enables the accurate computations necessary for compliance with CMS’s quality measures.
Rich Dewit, Global Head of Digital Solutions at Bayer, expressed the company’s enthusiasm about the collaboration, stating, “As leaders in radiation dose management software, Bayer is thrilled to enter into this collaboration with Alara Imaging, Inc. Bayer is committed to helping Radimetrics customers by engaging with Alara to support their institutions’ compliance with the new Hospital Quality Reporting eCQMs by leveraging the Alara gateway.”
Nate Mazonson, CEO and Co-founder of Alara Imaging, Inc., echoed this sentiment, saying, “Alara is proud to collaborate with Bayer to support health systems across the U.S. with these important patient safety measures.”