Press release: Qaelum launches COACH, a tool to monitor and improve quality & efficiency in medical imaging
June 19, 2017
Today Qaelum proudly announces the release of its newest product COACH on the European Market. COACH is a software solution to monitor and optimize quality and efficiency and to manage knowledge in medical imaging departments. The solution facilitates compliance with the upcoming European Directive, which requires radiology departments to undergo clinical audits on a regular basis. Besides, it assists radiology professionals in their daily work by providing them the correct knowledge the moment they need it.
Be constantly audit-ready
COACH is a software solution for medical imaging departments to monitor and improve quality, efficiency and compliance. It also manages and distributes all available knowledge. Today, the majority of hospitals are focusing on obtaining quality accreditations (eg. JCI, NIAZ/QMENTUM, HSO) and certifications (ISO) in order to increase their Quality Standards. Besides this, the European and local legislations as well are strengthening in order to guarantee that radiology departments are patient safe. Therefore, radiology departments need a quality system to tackle all these challenges. COACH is the first digital solution to take a vast guiding role in this process by streamlining daily and administrative tasks and indicating which problem areas need to get attention in order to be and remain compliant. This automated solution allows radiology professionals to remain constantly audit-ready.
“We are delighted to announce that our new product COACH is now on the market”, says Jurgen Jacobs, CEO. “We are convinced that COACH will contribute in lifting up quality and efficiency in radiology departments by providing daily assistance, which is of huge importance for the safety of patients.”
Until now clinical audits required a long preparation phase followed by an onsite visit of a multi-disciplinary audit team, with the risk that after the visit the attention for quality would drop. Jurgen Jacobs, CEO, and Jan Schillebeeckx, CMO, wanted a solution to make compliance with clinical audits and accreditation programmes easier and more automated so that it can be used as a tool for continuous quality monitoring and improvement. Thanks to this, radiology professionals can reduce now their time spent on preparatory activities for audits, resulting in a drop of needed Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) with a minimum of ½ FTE up to several FTE’s, hence liberating resources for core duties of the health services.
Daily practice tool to save time and increase efficiency
Having easy and direct access to all available procedures in a radiology department is a key factor to maintain and improve quality. Typically however, all this knowledge is dispersed and scattered and this is also a stumbling block for a successful audit. Guidance or access to best practices on how to solve problems in daily work is often missing and feelings of unfamiliarity on how to perform a specific task can be left unanswered. Therefore, procedures to describe all activities in the radiology department should be well-defined, centralized and easy retrievable, in order to make it easy for everyone to find relevant role-specific information the moment it is needed.
This problem as well is tackled by COACH. Through centralizing the departmental knowledge, all documents, standing orders, and instructions become available to the right people at the right time. This ensures that everyone on the floor applies unified and compliant good practices procedures in their daily practice, and that there is no time-loss for specific procedures. As such, efficiency and quality can increase enormously, which is highly beneficial for an environment where patient-safety is priority.
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ABOUT QAELUM N.V.
Qaelum is a high-tech spin-off company of the University Hospitals Leuven. Based on more than 15 years of quality assurance experience in an academic environment as well as in the field, Qaelum is considered as the preferred partner when it comes to medical imaging quality control. Leading hospital groups share our vision of a global system for quality assurance, which realises optimal use of radiation and guarantees maximum safety for patients and staff. At the same time, they acquire a more detailed overview of and deeper insights into all quality related aspects.
Passionate about solving real world problems, Qaelum focuses on the development and deployment of highly innovative solutions and services to resolve the daily problems of every medical imaging professional. Ranging from automated quality control in nationwide breast screening programs to optimised solutions for local patient dose monitoring, Qaelum has solutions for all these problems regardless of the scale. The combination of advanced software tools and expert knowledge in the field, makes the innovative solutions offering a preferred choice for healthcare professionals.
