National Decision Support Company and the European Society of Radiology launch ESR iGuide web portal at ECR 2018

VIENNA, March 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- National Decision Support Company (NDSC) Europe and the European Society of Radiology (ESR) today launched a new ESR iGuide web portal, widening access to the ESR's imaging referral guidelines through NDSC's trusted clinical decision support platform. The stand-alone portal is an online tool providing evidence-based imaging guidance in two user-friendly workflow options. Until September 30, 2018, the portal is accessible free of charge for all individual users.

"As the ESR's trusted partner, the launch of this portal is a milestone in NDSC's mission to provide easy access to evidence-based referral guidelines. This tool is targeted particularly at referring doctors and their patients for whom an electronic workflow with integrated decision support is not an option. Even without this IT infrastructure, patients everywhere should be provided with the highest quality diagnostic healthcare service," described Marcel Wassink, General Manager of NDSC Europe. "The portal adds versatility to NDSC's portfolio, as a great service for ESR members, a useful tool for individual healthcare professionals, but also as an educational resource."

Within the European Union, regulatory compliance with the Basic Safety Standards Directive (2013/59/EURATOM) is a priority now, just one month after the transposition deadline. The directive instructs all member states to ensure that referral guidelines for medical imaging are available to referrers.

"While not offering all the advantages of integrated decision support, the ESR iGuide portal is the simplest way for healthcare organisations or even entire countries to provide access to guidelines for all doctors within their network," explains Wassink. "In this way, the portal provides a solution for easy access to guidelines wherever an integration into electronic referral workflows is not possible."

From its launch on March 1, the ESR iGuide portal is available free of charge to all registered individual users for six months. From October 1, individual users can subscribe for €7 a month per month for continued access to the entirety of the ESR's guidelines. Portal access will remain free of charge for ESR radiologist members. Healthcare providers, medical societies and other organisations have the option of obtaining institutional licences from NDSC, and particularly in the context of regulatory compliance, national licenses can be issued to national authorities or designated representative bodies or societies.

"NDSC prides itself in offering innovative solutions to actual problems in clinical practice that will have a positive impact on patient care," Wassink concludes. CDS works best as an integrated solution embedded in a defined organisational setting, but that is only one of the many different settings in which healthcare is delivered and does not encompass all healthcare professionals and their patients. "The portal has been launched with those areas in mind and for situations where the adoption of EMR and order entry systems is not as advanced. All you need to access the portal with the entirety of the ESR's guidelines is a computer and internet connection.''

About NDSC Europe

National Decision Support Company (NDSC) Europe is a branch of National Decision Support Company, a US software company that is a market leader in decision support solutions for medical imaging. NDSC's CareSelect Imaging solution, centred around the ACR Select decision support solution developed in cooperation with the American College of Radiology using the well-established ACR Appropriateness Criteria®, expands on the range of criteria offered for imaging decision support and adds new core capabilities to the delivery platform. NDSC Europe is the exclusive distributor of the European Society of Radiology's imaging referral guidelines, providing the technical platform for ESR iGuide and support to deliver the latest evidence-based imaging referral guidelines within the healthcare workflow.