Enhancing electronic imaging referral workflows with evidence-based decision support
As part of the ESR’s quality and safety mission, the appropriate utilisation of medical imaging is a major priority for the society. Affecting aspects such as quality of patient care, waiting times, radiation protection issues, and healthcare costs, among others, improving the adherence to available guidance for appropriate imaging can have a variety of positive effects for patients, radiologists, referrers, and healthcare systems at large. As one of the most innovative medical societies in the world, the European Society of Radiology (ESR) is proud to be able to offer a state-of-the-art solution to support referral workflows to ensure better utilisation of radiology resources and provide better value for patients: ESR iGuide.
ESR iGuide is a clinical decision support (CDS) system utilising imaging referral guidelines developed by the ESR, based on the American College of Radiology Appropriateness Criteria (ACR AC). The ESR advocates the use of CDS integrated into existing imaging referral workflows to support referring doctors with evidence-based guidance in selecting the most appropriate procedure for their patients the first time. Delivered by the ESR’s Quality and Safety in Imaging (QSI) GmbH, ESR iGuide enhances healthcare professionals’ interaction with order entry systems by providing actionable, tailored information at the right points in the workflow. The combined expertise of the ACR and the ESR ensures that referrers and patients can be confident of receiving evidence-based, expert-developed guidance.
Clinical decision support delivers the best results if it is fully integrated into referrer’s native workflows. ESR iGuide is configurable to deliver optimal results depending on healthcare organisations’ needs through integrations with leading electronic health record systems in Europe. The ESR also provides its guidance in a user-friendly, stand-alone ESR iGuide web-portal, for which licensing options are available for all user types, from individual physicians to country-wide licences. This is also meant to facilitate compliance with the EURATOM Basic Safety Standards Directive (2013/59).