Cris and the future of regional imaging: preparing for the National Imaging Registry
Radiology teams don’t need reminding that imaging networks are growing, or that regional working is increasingly expected rather than optional. What gets discussed less is what actually breaks when trusts try to share workflows: procedure catalogues that don’t match, protocols applied inconsistently, and accountability that gets harder to trace once a request crosses an organisational boundary.
Different trusts often run different local procedure catalogues, so the same clinical request can trigger a different protocol depending on which trust picks it up, unless that mismatch is explicitly reconciled. The risk persists even where a trust has full visibility of a patient’s prior imaging, because the systems involved were never designed to agree on what a given request means.
Accountability is the second problem. Once a referral, vetting task or reporting task is redirected to another organisation, someone needs to be able to answer who acted on it, when, and under what authority, across trust boundaries rather than within one.
The National Imaging Registry (NIR) will help with part of this picture, giving clinicians secure access to images and reports regardless of where they were created. Mismatched protocols and unclear accountability for a study as it moves between organisations sit beyond what the NIR alone can resolve, and this is where regional platforms, including Cris, are having to evolve.
Cris is being developed with this direction at the heart. We want to help trusts move easily to shared regional care pathways, without losing control of accountability along the way. Cris allows trusts to share a single database across a network, so a referral, once redirected to another trust, carries its full clinical context and history with it rather than starting again in a new system. Procedure and protocol definitions are harmonised across the network and mapped to national exam codes, so Cris Vetting applies the correct protocol wherever a request lands. Cris Scheduling shows capacity across every participating trust, so redirected referrals can be booked at the most appropriate site, with cross-site reporting and peer review supported through Cris Reporting. A single audit trail, covering vetting, scheduling and reporting alike, records every action, allocation and status change against the organisation and user responsible, keeping accountability as work moves across boundaries. The same regional visibility flags frequently imaged patients across every participating trust, helping reduce unnecessary repeat radiation exposure, a benefit specific to radiology that broader interoperability initiatives rarely address directly. Patient Reviewer, a clinician-facing view within Cris, brings this regional picture together with access to the NIR itself, giving a clinician a patient’s full regional imaging history alongside their national record in one place.
The coordination problems radiology networks are working through regionally are the same ones NIR will need solved at national scale. Its role is to extend that shared context nationally, so every trust can draw on the same patient imaging history regardless of where it was carried out. Having worked alongside radiology services for more than three decades, Magentus is building Cris to support that shift, from siloed working, to regional networks, to a genuinely national approach to diagnostic imaging.
Read Magentus’ recent report on the future of diagnostics here.
This news story has been sponsored by the companies concerned and does not represent the views or opinions of RAD Magazine.
