Last weekend we held the 4th IPTS symposium at our radgurukul auditorium. More details on this can be found on our website ( www.telradsol.com). The top 10 impressions that this symposium left on me in particular were as follows
1. The interest in PACS and Teleradiology in India is burgeoning. For the 2nd IPTS which we held 2 years ago we had only 20 registrations. This year we had 70, from all over the country, and our auditorium was full. (Last year we held the symposium in Singapore, hosted by our partners the National Healthcare group. They had over 100 registrations from all over the world, indicating that the PACS market and user base in Singapore is much more evolved)
2. The level of discussion this time was at a much higher level. The vendor panel, moderated by Ricky Bedi of TeleradTech brought up many relevant points and challenges and was a good spectrum in that it had the heavyweights of the industry as well as lesser known startup companies that have only recently entered the space, all of whom held their own effectively.
3. Terms like cloud computing have become the new buzzwords in PACS.
4. New user-friendly technologies such as the IPad are adding a new dimension to healthcare delivery. Mobile phone based teleradiology is an increasingly attractive proposition, given advances in screen display and broadband telephony . An abstract presented at the last RSNA received a lot of media attention and brought this concept to initial visibility.
5. The expectations of users are increasing. Dr Philbin of Johns Hopkins, in his videoconference lecture, talked about how they are at 99.99% uptime and their clients, ie the radiologists now want them to be at 99.999% uptime (truly staggering to me)
6. Videoconferencing if done effectively is a great way to cut costs as well as to reduce our carbon footprint.
7. Great lectures, including the ones by Dr Carrino, Dr Ong, Dr Ganapathy and Dr Indrajit, make for an amazing learning experience.
8. The convergence of futuristic healthcare and cutting edge technology make this particular conference unique.
9. Competition between vendors can be gracious and decent, or it can be unhealthy and unpleasant.
10. A conference is most successful if the food is good (our chefs ruled!) and the mood is light (our office band, the Teleradiators, rocked the audience over lunch)