Cardea Technology’s Bone Densitometry Blog

This posting is part 2 of a 3-part series highlighting how BoneStation can reduce costs, save time, and improve quality in BMD reporting.  In the previous blog, we emphasized the cost savings aspect. Here we focus on the time aspect, or the speed of reporting.

Bone Densitometry using DXA has been around for a while. As we all know, a particularity of BMD scans is that they output images (spine, hip, etc) as well as numerical values (BMD, BMC, T-score, Z-score, etc…).

In today’s digital world, still many practices waste precious time in error-prone manual steps when reviewing DXA studies. These steps include: writing down numbers on paper, calculating BMD changes with calculator, retrieving historical scans from PACS, using post-its to ask technologists for reanalysis of a scan, using dictation, using the FRAX website, etc…

BoneStation resolves these issues, thereby offering the opportunity to save time at several points of the workflow:

• Data (BMD, T-score, etc..) is extracted directly and instantaneously from the DXA scans
• No need for human reading, dictation or transcription
• Current and prior scans (images and numbers) show up side by side allowing for instantaneous comparisons
  • no need to pull charts, or to retrieve historical images and data on PACS
• BMD changes are computed instantaneously and show up in the report
• BMD changes are instantaneously compared to the stored least significant changes
• FRAX is calculated automatically according to ISCD recommendations
• Request for reanalysis is built in BoneStation for quick and traceable communication with the technologist

Even today we occasionally observe situations where readers do not compare scans with priors and do not calculate changes in BMD.  The International Society of Clinical Densitometry (ISCD) recommends these as important elements of a bone density report.  Perhaps it takes too long to provide this information in a report.  However, BoneStation makes it easy.

This BoneStation video illustrates how quickly a reading physician can review a spine and hip DXA study, including FRAX.  An actual review, with prior scans, can often take under one minute with BoneStation.  With the narrative in the accompanying video, it takes about a minute and half to review a spine/hip.

We hope that this brief blog helps you think through your bone densitometry process. 

Sylvie Bokshorn

BoneStation has produced more than a quarter million reports and has proven to be reliable solution for BMD reporting.  Customers such as MGH, Swedish Medical Group, Emory and others enjoy higher throughput and quality at lower cost.