Top 3 Ways Virtual Support is Making Ultrasound a Must-have for Every Practice — Core Imaging

Gone are the days of having an ultrasound in your practice that translated into spending days in off-site education locations or buying multiple books that may or may not have an image of what you need to reference. As telemedicine and support make strides in veterinary medicine, ultrasound systems are leading the way in connecting you to the outside world.

1. Scanning Assistance / Training In the past, buying an ultrasound system meant many days of off-site training by the support team from the company you bought it from. It also meant costs. Travel to class destinations, training yourself to use the ultrasound proficiently, and working with experts to learn even more than that.

   Connected ultrasound systems can now provide training directly through the system itself, seeing you live and talking to you as well, right where you’re at. This allows you to do more frequent training sessions with smaller groups in your clinic. Hired a new staff member? If you have a connected ultrasound, you could have the company you purchased it from train that person rather than you do it from memory. If you want to enhance your skills at scanning, a few systems now offer the ability to be trained directly through the system. Imagine being in the clinic and having a trained sonographer teach you how to scan. As soon as you are done with the training, you are back seeing patients. No more taking time off!

2. Sharing great images with ease Sharing images from any imaging device usually means film or paper being involved. Now with connectivity being brought into ultrasound, images are shared electronically with very little technical know how needed. In fact, the newest systems on the market feature a QR codes (You know, that little box of black and white squares that many of us look at questioning what it actually does). By simply putting your phone into camera mode and hold it up the to the QR code. A link will pop up and when you click on the link you see whatever the QR code designates. So, for ultrasound your client can take their phone image of the QR code and immediately have all the ultrasound images and videos you took. No emails, mistyped links or fuss!

3. Sending cases out to be read Now that you have the training to get great images and you can share them easily with your customers, you still may have the need to have a radiologist, cardiologist or internist read them images and report back to you. Connectivity allows this to happen not only through your computer, but also directly through the ultrasound. Connected ultrasound allows you to choose who you would like to send and either send them directly from the system or from the ultrasounds connected website. No longer do you need to be with the system or on the providers webpage and import images.

As you can see, it’s an exciting time to think about getting a connected ultrasound. Connectivity should not only increase your use of the ultrasound, but also improve the overall care you provide to every animal that walks through your door.