MIA Victoria

Customers of a large Australian radiology practice praise Intelerad’s referring physician portal for instant, easy access to results and images, while the practice leverages InteleConnect’s brandable and intuitive interface for new business benefit.

Medical Imaging Australia in Victoria (MIA Victoria) is one of the largest and most comprehensive private radiology practice in Australia’s most densely populated state. MIA Victoria provides medical imaging services to more than 40 practices located throughout the Melbourne metropolitan region and surrounding rural areas. In addition, radiology services are provided to many private and public hospitals.s.

MIA Victoria radiologists perform more than one million studies annually, generating approximately 22 terabytes of patient data and images each year. This massive amount of data – more than 110 terabytes, and growing – is stored and managed by Intelerad’s high-performing and highly scalable medical imaging solution, IntelePACS®.

There are more than 120 radiologists at MIA Victoria, and IntelePACS provides them the freedom to interpret images and report studies from any location. Given its success with the product, adopted in September 2007 and quickly deployed to all 50+ clinics, MIA Victoria began offering referring doctors online access to studies via IntelePACS’ integrated viewer, InteleViewer™.

“The InteleViewer roll-out was a great success,” said Julian Gully, IT Manager for MIA Victoria. As proof he cited the practice’s 5,000 registered InteleViewer users – including general practitioners, specialists, and emergency medicine doctors. Online access to images and reports provides users in every environment the information needed to provide high-quality patient care.

In 2011, MIA Victoria delighted its extensive customer base by embracing Intelerad’s newest tool – the InteleConnect referring physician portal – for instant online access to results. A browser-based solution that supports Windows and Macintosh browsers as well as mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry, InteleConnect requires no download, installation, or training.

Gully describes the reaction of MIA Victoria referrers to InteleConnect as swift and unequivocal. “In a word, the reaction was ‘WOW’,” he says. “It is such a powerful tool. Our referrers are telling us it is fantastic.”

The full Intelerad tool set enables MIA Victoria radiologists to efficiently and effectively communicate key information to their referring physician customers. The referring physicians, in turn, benefit from quick and efficient access to the most important diagnostic information, whenever and wherever they require it, using InteleConnect.

“Clinically, that’s very powerful, very beneficial,” says Gully. “From a patient management perspective, it’s tremendous.”

The InteleConnect portal also offers instant messaging and other features that help connect radiologists and referring physicians for collaboration, subspecialist consultation, and other interaction. These capabilities are critical to providing well-informed, highly-differentiated patient care.

With a practice as large as MIA Victoria’s, where radiologists are deployed across many different facilities in a wide geographic region, this flexible communication capability is hugely beneficial. “To be able to instantly contact the radiologist to ask a quick question is very compelling,” Gully says, especially in complex, time-sensitive, or highly specialised situations.

In addition to making referring physicians happy and well-informed, InteleConnect provides extra business benefits for MIA Victoria in the form of brand visibility. As a dedicated portal with a brandable interface, InteleConnect can strengthen customer relationships and build loyalty within the referrer base. Gully appreciates the ability to customise the splash page and to put the MIA Victoria logo icon on a device’s desktop. “Having the logo in front of your customers is always important,” he notes.

The portal’s intuitive interface and no-download, no-installation access also significantly reduces the IT burden for MIA Victoria. Gully notes that the use of InteleConnect minimizes technical calls from the referrer base, comprising another major business benefit of the portal’s roll-out.

Intelerad’s radiology market expertise and commitment to ongoing product research and development inspires confidence in customers like MIA Victoria. Because Intelerad’s customer-centric culture welcomes and encourages input on products and features, the end result is guaranteed to meet customer needs. “We are very, very happy that we were part of the InteleConnect development process from the beginning,” says Gully.