An NHS-X winning platform.

The RADARR platform seeks to ease the process of connecting medical professionals with their patient's radiology reports with an all-in-one solution that allows for the reduction of the time it takes to make a diagnosis on the basis of MRI scans and X-rays. An RCR audit found only 34% of radiology departments have an alert system in place, even fewer had facilities for tracking reports posing unacceptable risks and consequences for patients with critical diagnoses. The NHS litigation authority cited delayed diagnosis to alleged failures in the system of communicating unexpected or significant findings, failure to recommend appropriate follow-up studies or action leading to significant harm. RADARR is intended to reduce the impact of litigation on the NHS.

Currently, a radiologist has to email critical findings to colleagues from a PACS (picture archiving and communication system) machine. To do this the radiologist must be in the same location as the scanning machine, record findings in a text-based manner and generate a separate proforma document on that PACS machine. As a result, the process can be labour intensive and holds multiple inefficiencies.

By combining these services into a single web platform, as well as capturing scans from a PACs machine Radarr also opens up the potential for a radiologist to start the proforma process from a remote folder of scan images if necessary, allowing for more remote-working/socially distanced scenarios.

The enormous volume of patients, combined with lockdown, remote working, and social distance, has made it challenging for radiology teams to transmit diagnostic information to the appropriate team, in the right format, in a timely manner. Since the Covid-19 lockdowns prohibited people from being in the same area, the inefficiencies have been exacerbated by the wide range of digital communication platforms that have become part of the medical communications process, both in the NHS and in private practice.