Medical Blog- Lotus Imaging

Many medical imaging executives should be feeling like they forgot something. What have they forgotten? Important metrics. Yes, they’re measuring quality metrics like patient satisfaction, referring-physician satisfaction, and length of stay. They’ve carefully reviewed the recommendations from the advisory board and CMS’s PQRS program, and they’ve religiously tracking their relative value units. Nevertheless they’re not measuring things that are vital to the success of their radiology imaging department. Because healthcare has changed, and the shift from volume to value has begun in earnest. To keep up, we have to measure items that matter in today’s world. 1.      Exam repeat rates: often, we see radiology departments carefully measuring turnaround times but forgetting to measure exam repeat rates. This measurement may not have been critical in the past, but it is now and it’s likely to be more important in the future. If you’ve got a problem with th...

It is common to hear adults complaining of back pain, however this is not always indicative of something serious. However it is rare to hear a child complaining of back pain. Such issues in children should never be ignored as it might be due to an underlying disorder. Back pain associated with fever, numbness, trouble walking and pain during rest is a serious concern. Your child may have a dull pain in the back muscles or may have a very sharp stabbing pain which makes it difficult for them to stand straight or bend forward or backward. Early identification of the causes and appropriate treatment would prevent complications, and keep your child pain free. Therefore, it is better to see the doctor if your child complains of back pain. Here are some underlying medical conditions in your child which may cause back pain: Spondylosis Any sports injuries that stress the back, or sports such as gymnastics that require hyperextension of the back, increase the pressure placed ...

Healthcare data can be complex – in part due to the non-linear nature of diagnosis and treatment, and also due to differing healthcare standards across regions in the world. Additionally, data privacy and other related laws can make healthcare information difficult to access and share. So much so that in many countries, including India, a patient may not have complete access to his/ her medical record. Considering that the next paradigm shift in healthcare is expected to come from the adoption of digital technologies – whether for patient experience or improved efficiency of hospital tasks – it is important to address current challenges around data sharing and access, lest they become hurdles to progress. In that context, block chain could be a savior for the industry. Block chain is continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block contains, typically, a link to a previous block, a timestamp and the transacti...

There’s been growing attention to the human microbiome- the collection of bacteria, viruses and other microbes residing inside our bodies – and how a variety of diseases interact with it. For the most part, however, that attention has focused on particular regions of the body, notably the gastrointestinal tract, or specific microorganisms. Turns out, biologists have only just begun to scratch the surface: 99 percent or more of the microbiome consists of organisms that as far as the paper’s author can tell, no one has even seen before, let alone categorized or named. As Stephen Quake told a press release: “We found the gamut… we found things that are related to things people have seen before, we found things that are divergent, and we found things that are completely novel.” To wit, the team found an entirely new kind of the highly diverse but poorly understood group of torque teno viruses: “Among the known torque teno viruses one group infects humans and another infec...