Bryan Medical Center’s “Try Before You Buy” Approach to Evaluating Wireless Detectors

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Sharon Harms, Director of Radiology, Bryan Medical Center

The radiology department at Bryan Medical Center in Nebraska recently decided to upgrade from CR to DR, which involved converting 13 X-ray rooms and two mobile imaging systems at all four of our locations with wireless detectors. Because this represented such a large investment, we developed an evaluation process to ensure that our technologists and other staff members could play an active role in evaluating each supplier’s solution.

We started by inviting staff to initial vendor presentations in a large conference room.  Then we tested and evaluated three suppliers’ wireless DR detectors for room and mobile imaging. We conducted several days of on-site use for each system. After the on-site demonstrations were complete, each supplier took turns setting up a workstation in a conference room for several days so our staff could get additional experience with the system’s capabilities and software features. The entire process took about eight weeks.

Each of our 40 technologists ranked each system in the following categories: image quality, ease of entering patient data, ability to move between exams, image processing time, detector calibration procedures, battery life, battery recharging, ease of correcting patient information errors, and the ability to reprocess images and merge studies. We evaluated special software features (such as tube and line visualization), remote reporting and Q&A tools including reject analysis and dose measurement. We also met the service team for each supplier.

When the results were in, Carestream was selected as the leading supplier by 87 percent of our technologists. We are happy with both the process and the results, and our staff believes it’s worth the effort to try before you buy when adopting new medical imaging technology.