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US Worksheets and PACS
So I am just curious as to how other places handle US Worksheets. We have Change Healthcare (formally McKesson) for our PACS. And we are utilizing their JotPads for our US Worksheets. These work for the most part as they are just an electronic picture of our worksheets and the technologists can just draw on them (like in Paint) and mark diagrams and such. But when it comes to actually typing information on them that is not quite as user friendly as you have to click text boxes all over the place to then type in.
So I am just curious if anyone else out here is using JotPads for the same thing….if they have discovered any shortcuts or anything that makes working with them any easier?
Or what are people doing with their US Worksheets? Are others just using paper still and then scanning them into PACS with the exam?
Are there maybe other programs out there that are designed to make worksheets more electronic?
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11 Replies
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At present we’re scanning in the US worksheets.
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Surprised you guys don’t use DICOM Structured Reports, it is widely supported by the US vendors, and by now most of the VR software supports automatically importing all the measurements as well.
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I agree with Herman. In the event you dont do that you can always create a template based on the worksheet that they can fill in the blanks with so you can search that data by fields. That is omething you cant do by simply scanning although if your handwriting is good you may be able to use OCR. Doi DICOM SR- much better,
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The problem with DICOM SR is that some sites consider tech worksheets “transient.” SRs are typically committed to the long-term storage of the PACS. With JotPad, the system can be configured to purge the notes (I think, either once the study is reported or after a period of time). The worksheets are more of a way to “pass notes in class,” rather than “submit your homework.” I’m sure that there are ways to improve the implementation of JotPad, but it does have a use.
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Quote from Herman Oosterwijk (OTech)
Surprised you guys don’t use DICOM Structured Reports, it is widely supported by the US vendors, and by now most of the VR software supports automatically importing all the measurements as well.
I am trying to learn more about using DICOM SR to streamline transmission of ultrasound data to voice recognition (i.e. PS360).
Does this typically require a third party software interface to parse DICOM SR data and create useable and accurate data fields for the VR software?
Seems like an ideal solution, but implementation could be limited by cost and complexity of adding additional software systems.-
Yes, this typically requires third-party software to enable.
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It also requires that you have a correct mapping of the various ways different US vendors describe the same data into a standard representation.
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Have you considered SonoReview by a company called Kailo Medical. We use it in our clinics. I am not affiliated with the company, and there are costs involved in integrating it into your workflow, but our experience has been good, and it beats trying to edit scanned documents. Values can be imported into the template from the DICOM measurement data sent in the meta data from the ultrasound modality so that could be help you save time and improve accuracy. David
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RE: SonoReview
Looks very impressive. We ourselves are currently heavily paper based. At the very least hope to import the DICOM SR measurements into our reporting platform.-
If any of you have a Corepoint Integration engine, a very smart user created some action lists and code sets, which along with a DICOM gear (purchased from CorePoint, but very inexpensive) parses the DSR and will populate custom fields in PS360. We also needed some specialized help from CorePoint professional services, but again, all very affordable.
I won’t lie and say it’s going to be easy. It will take time, especially if you’re part of an enterprise that has many different brands of US units, but take it an exam at a time and you’ll get the mappings all completed. We also use it for DEXA’s.
Keep in mind that the DSR won’t include everything the radiologist needs from the sonographer, but quite a few of the body parts, the sonographer doesn’t have to do anything. OB 2nd/3rd Trimester is probably the worst. The DSR will capture roughly 80% of the info the radiologist needs. The rest, the sonographer logs into the PS360 rad portal and types the info directly into the custom fields.
We still need a scanned worksheet for the ones that have diagrams the sonographers label.-
We are also on Change Healthcare PACS, and scan paperwork into PACS as well. I’ve never been a fan of jotpads, personally. You could attempt to build a form in EMR (EPIC?), which I’ve seen done for Mammo and US, but having it readily available when looking at past studies in PACS without having to search the EMR too is attractive. If you have GE scanners, their Viewpoint software looks great, but is pretty expensive considering what paper and a scanner costs. Not much ROI there for finance to drool at.
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