We design MRI around the scanner. What about the patient?
MRI departments are built around some of the most advanced technology in healthcare. Yet for many patients, the problem isn’t usually getting the scan. It’s everything that has to happen around it.
Take patients with pacemakers and other cardiac implantable electronic devices. Many are otherwise well outpatients, but their scan needs a defined pathway, device checks, and monitoring throughout, with continuous pulse oximetry strongly recommended.
The 2024 Joint British Society consensus noted that only around half of UK MRI units were accepting scan requests, even for patients with MR conditional devices. Around half a million people in the UK live with a pacemaker or ICD, and implant numbers are rising, so that gap will only grow.
So how many patients are travelling further, waiting longer, or being redirected?
It isn’t because MRI is inappropriate. It’s because the pathway around their scan is hard to provide. For radiologists, that can mean a delayed diagnosis, a less suitable alternative test, or a patient lost between services.
Part of the answer is monitoring. If MRI conditional monitoring is tied to one room or one type of patient, every monitored scan becomes a logistics exercise. If one monitor can serve a CIED outpatient, an anaesthetised child, and a ventilated ICU patient, the department can offer far more.
Critical care is moving the same way. The Intensive Care Society’s 2026 transfer guidance now recommends dedicated ‘MRI-compatible’ monitoring, with a dedicated adjoining screen in the control room, for critically ill patients.
Expectations are rising across the whole MRI pathway, not just inside the bore.
Infusion is the other half. When a conventional pump can’t enter the scan room, it stays outside and the team runs long extension lines to the patient. We’ve become used to this, but more tubing means more connections, more dead space, and more drug sitting between pump and patient. That adds potential for waste, contamination, disconnection, and delay, whether the infusion is sedation, vasoactive support, or adenosine for stress perfusion.
The IRadimed portfolio was designed around these problems. The 3880 MRI Patient Monitor is light enough to travel with the patient, with wireless 5-lead ECG, Masimo SET SpO₂ and NIBP as standard. With options to also include EtCO₂, wireless invasive blood pressure, temperature, anaesthetic agent monitoring, and cardiac gating. The MRidium 3860+ is a non-magnetic infusion pump that can operate inside the scan room within its MR conditional limits. It works with a syringe, bag or bottle, so teams no longer need metres of extension line.
For imaging teams, the benefit is practical: fewer workarounds, less equipment switching, and one setup for very different patients.
We invest heavily in making scanners faster and smarter. Perhaps the next improvement isn’t inside the scanner at all. Perhaps it’s making the journey around it easier to deliver, and MRI easier to access.
References
- Bhuva AN, Charles-Edwards G, Ashmore J, et al. Joint British Society consensus recommendations for magnetic resonance imaging for patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices. Heart 2024;110:e3.
- Intensive Care Society. Guidance On: The Transfer of the Critically Ill Adult. 5th ed. London: Intensive Care Society; 2026. Chapter 26.
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