Loyola University Medical Center is committed to providing clinicians with up-to-date and easily accessible images and associated data, in conformance with HIPAA security standards. In the Department of Radiology, we offer a variety of high-end image processing software suites, an integrated PACS solution, and a dedicated team of highly responsive informatics specialists that work collaboratively with physicians to provide an efficient and content-rich interpretation experience.

A number of technology infrastructure enhancements are currently under way. Some of these enhancements, which include virtual servers and storage area network upgrades, will provide an exceptionally robust platform for current systems and will pave the way for easy deployment of future desired systems.

Other enhancements will push the capabilities of existing platforms further into the future. Our upcoming implementation of Nuance’s Powerscribe 360 will enable us to go beyond simple voice recognition, including tools that utilize XML data elements from modality equipment to populate report templates and hyponyms that can turn freely dictated text into consistent report formats.

A forthcoming PACS upgrade will tie together Gottlieb Memorial hospital and Loyola University Medical Center into an easily accessed database using hanging protocols, workflows and other tools that provide the radiologist with an efficient reading experience. This upgrade also provides us with an expandable framework that will allow us to add imaging workloads seamlessly from other Trinity organizations.

Among the more impressive systems available to our radiologists is Illuminate, from Softek. This system allows the radiologist to instantly access the entire report database to search on any term, phrase, or demographic as it relates to a desired pathology or other query. This powerful tool will soon add the Gottlieb Memorial hospital database to the nearly 4 million Loyola reports residing in this system, and in the future it will also include pathology results.

Loyola has a dedicated 3D lab that works collaboratively with the radiologists to provide a large spectrum of image processing. Utilizing the latest tools from Invivo/Dynacad, GE, Siemens, TeraRecon, Simplant, TraumaCAD, Circle, and others, our staff is dedicated to providing radiologists and other clinicians with a superior level of clinical information.