Category: Company News

The Board of Comrad Medical Systems is pleased to announce Phil Wilson’s permanent appointment as Chief Executive Officer. The board fully believes in his technical expertise, leadership, and vision for the company.

Phil Wilson’s journey with Comrad began in September 2005; his strong technical background and dedication made an immediate impact. Over the past 19 years, Phil has been a steadfast and committed team member, consistently exceeding expectations and making significant contributions to the business.  He has held various roles within Comrad, most recently as Chief Operating Officer, where he focused on addressing the evolving needs of the radiology market and the demands of customers and patients.

John Livingston, Chairman of the Comrad Board, expressed his excitement for the future of Comrad, stating,

“We are thrilled to have a CEO who not only understands the Australian and New Zealand radiology market but also brings a deep technical knowledge to the table.”

Livingston added, “Phil’s expertise and understanding of our customers and their patients will enable us to develop innovative products that significantly improve practice workflows, patient engagement, and customer satisfaction.”

Phil Wilson remarked, “I have always been passionate about Comrad and our products where I am excited to lead such a talented team into the next phase of growth. I look forward to working closely with our customers to deliver best-in-class solutions, and I am confident in our ability to succeed.”

Please join us in congratulating Phil on his appointment.  

After a successful launch in April 2021, Comrad is pleased to announce the second release of our web-based patient engagement platform, Aura Care Connect.

Building on Aura Care Connect’s patient online appointment scheduling functionality, this new release provides a co-branded application for patient pre-registration workflows to be completed in the app and seamlessly integrated back into the COMRAD RIS workflow.

From the convenience of their own device, patients can securely access pre-arrival workflows in the Aura Care Connect application to:

• View their appointment details and download a summary to their calendar or save a copy to their device
• Complete, sign and submit web-based consent forms before they arrive in the practice
• Capture an image of their referral document or other relevant clinical documents, and securely upload them to the RIS
• View procedure instructions and preparation details for their appointment
• View information links related to their scan

Several enhancements have also been added to the RIS to ensure practice staff can proactively manage patient engagement workflows and easily determine where follow-up with patients is required.

Many of the tasks required to be completed by the patient upon arrival in the clinic are time consuming, manual and often prone to error. Patients can feel rushed to complete consent forms in the clinic which may include providing a detailed clinical history, list of current medications and answering personal questions regarding pregnancy and radiation exposure.

This can lead to a sub-optimal patient experience which may impact on repeat business or, in cases where the information provided by the patient contraindicates the scan that has been booked, can cause disruption and delays to the imaging schedule or require cancellation of the appointment. With the high costs associated with running a medical imaging business, it is imperative for practices to optimise staff efficiency and machine utilisation.

Aura Care Connect pre-arrive workflow provides a range of benefits to both patients and radiology practices.

“Beyond the initial booking, patient arrivals require additional manual work and paper forms to be completed. Aura Care Connect will have the ability to automate and reduce these overheads and make the process much more simple for patients when they attend our clinics” – Jeremy Edwards, CIO, Perth Radiological Clinic

Benefits to patients:

• An improved patient experience – the patient is better informed and prepared for their examination
• More time to complete pre-arrival information at home
• A streamlined arrival process for patients and reduced waiting times in-clinic

• Increased practice efficiency, reduced data entry for staff and improved registration efficiency
• A reduction in DNA rates due to increased patient engagement before their appointment
• Improved quality of patient-completed consent forms made available prior to attendance

Please request a brochure or contact us to find out how Aura Care Connect can transform your medical imaging practice.

Aura Care Connect, our web-based patient engagement platform was successfully launched in April 2021. Comrad is thrilled to announce its highly-anticipated second release as part of the latest update to Aura 1.10 which also includes the addition of new features in Aura Forms.

Aura Care Connect

Building on Aura Care Connect’s patient online appointment scheduling functionality, this new release provides a co-branded application for patient pre-registration workflows to be completed in the app and seamlessly integrated back into the RIS workflow.

From the convenience of their own device, patients can securely access pre-arrival workflows in the Aura Care Connect application to:

• View their appointment details and download a summary to their calendar or save a copy to their device.
• Complete, sign and submit web-based consent forms before they arrive in the practice
• Capture an image of their referral document or other relevant clinical documents, and securely upload them to the RIS
• View procedure instructions and preparation details for their appointment
• View information links related to their scan

Several enhancements have also been added to the RIS to ensure practice staff can proactively manage patient engagement workflows and easily determine where follow-up with patients is required.

Aura Care Connect pre-arrive workflow provides:

• An improved patient experience – the patient is better informed and prepared for their examination
• Increased practice efficiency, reduced data entry for staff and improved registration efficiency
• A streamlined arrival process for patients
• A reduction in DNA rates due to increased patient engagement before their appointment
• Improved quality of patient information made available prior to the patient’s attendance

Aura Forms

Aura 1.10 also provides numerous enhancements to Aura Forms, our web-based patient forms application. Based on user feedback, we have focused on improving the user experience in the form builder and have added an additional workflow to support patients completing forms in the Aura Care Connect pre-arrival workflow.

Users who build forms can now select the new “appointment created” initiator when creating rules for presenting forms, extending the use cases for web-based forms. Forms can now be presented when an appointment has been created, when a visit has been started or when an exam has commenced.

Other new features include:

• Desktop, Tablet and Mobile preview options
• A library of form templates is available to assist new users to onboard and commence building forms faster
• Enhancements to menu lists and configuration screens have streamlined the process of building forms
• Smarter form rules and rule cloning have broadened the use cases forms can be used for
• Moving and cloning basic components within a form, and cloning an entire form provides for faster form build times
• Improvement to the date selector component to support triggers.
• Improved support for managing changes to composite components
• Form publishing, archiving and deleting to better support form version control
• Enhancements to the Import/Export process making the process easier to updates forms into Production
• Patients can now complete forms from home or remotely in addition to in-practice
• Staff can pre-fill responses for the patient when creating appointments over the phone through a secure login.

Please request a brochure or contact us to find out how Aura 1.10 can transform your medical imaging practice.

Comrad is excited to announce the first release of Aura Care Connect, a RIS-driven, web-based patient engagement platform.

The cloud-hosted platform provides the foundation for medical imaging practices deliver an end-to-end digital patient journey for each attendance, from the moment the patient is referred through to completion and delivery of their clinical report.

Available in Aura 1.9, the first release of Aura Care Connect provides the functionality to allow patients to schedule medical imaging appointments online, at their own convenience, into resources and time slots made available by the practice.

From an embedded widget in the medical imaging practice’s website, the booking process is launched in the cloud, with a secure connection back to the integrated COMRAD system. The patient chooses most of the appointment parameters such that it meets their availability and location requirements.

The Online Appointments (OLA) workflow captures important patient information including details about the patient’s requested examination and provides mechanisms for the patient to securely upload an image of their referral. Once uploaded, the entered information is securely stored in the RIS in real time and the appointment is scheduled into the RIS Calendar.

Radiology scheduling is complex and requires a detailed understand of numerous variables including tenancy/site/region booking rules, staff availability/rosters, calendar reserves, resource rosters and room capacity rules, equipment capabilities, adjacent booking rules, exam information/preparation, multiple procedure workflows and patient specific requirements.

As patients cannot be expected to understand the complexities of radiology bookings, Aura Care Connect removes as many barriers as possible that could lead to a patient abandoning the process mid-booking. The platform design has focused on a simple, responsive user interface that seamlessly guides the patient through workflow steps without them needing to understand the complexities of a practice’s scheduling rules.

To support the OLA workflow, an extensive list of features has also been added to COMRAD RIS to provide the ability to configure the behaviour of the application with regard to services offered, available appointment times and information provided to patients. New workflow functionality has been added to extend existing RIS Referral and Appointment workflows to effectively recognise, review and manage the inbound online bookings and call-back requests, while enhancements to existing RIS EMR workflows for improved patient matching provide active alerts to end users. An SMS booking confirmation step is available at the end of the booking process and enhancements to the SMS workflows now allow for full message history to be viewed from the patient file.

Future releases of Aura Care Connect will include:

• Pre-registration workflows – a secure, client branded application allowing patients to complete certain registration tasks before they arrive in the clinic, including the completion of consent forms, updates to demographics, links to find more information about the requested procedure, display a booking summary that includes patient instructions and download a copy of the booking summary to the device’s calendar
• Integration to GP e-Referrals workflows to further automate the patient online booking workflow, and enhancements to the patient booking experience
• Patient self-arrival workflows will allow for patients to complete in-practice registration either from their own device or from a practice device
• Post examination workflows including patient surveys and secure access to view invoices, reports and images

Request a brochure or contact one of our Aura Sales Specialists to find out how Aura Care Connect can transform your medical imaging practice.

Aura Care Connect is an integrated, web-based patient engagement platform that provides the foundation for Medical Imaging Practices deliver stronger referrer engagement, improved practice efficiencies and increased patient satisfaction.

Online Appointments (OLA) workflow is the first component of Aura Care Connect and will be available to clients in April 2021 as part of the Aura RIS portfolio. The workflow supports patients and caregivers scheduling appointments and requests for callback directly into the RIS. This allows the patient to choose appointment parameters such that it meets their personal availability and location. The system captures important patient information including details about the patient’s requested examination and provides mechanisms to securely upload an image of the referral.

Subsequent, iterative releases will provide for:

1. Pre-registration workflows – A secure, client branded application allowing patients to complete certain registration tasks before they arrive in the clinic, including the completion of consent forms, updates to demographics, links to find more information about the requested procedure, display a booking summary that includes patient instructions and download a copy of the booking summary to the device’s calendar. The release of this workflow will provide significant practice efficiencies for our clients through reduced registration time and by enhancing available information about the patient and procedure to optimise bookings. Pre-registration workflow is currently in development and expected to be ready for release in May 2021.
2. Integration to GP e-Referrals workflows to further automate the patient online booking workflow, and enhancements to the patient booking experience.
3. Patient self-arrival workflows.
4. Post examination workflows including patient surveys and secure access to view invoices, reports and images.

Click here to register your interest in Aura Care Connect.