Introduction
TeleRay is a global healthcare communication platform oriented around radiology – medicine’s primary diagnostic tool.
Advanced radiology review, management and reporting, global exchange and storage are supplemented by virtual consultation capability – with studies – in real time. Incredibly affordable at any scale, TeleRay is the fastest, most secure and feature-rich solution available, with low-to-no implementation or clinical workflow interruption. Combined with the power of Athena EMR, sites can now deliver a complete workflow upgrade by adding image enablement, reports and results into their patient chart. In addition, the practice or site may send the images and results to their patient, any provider, specialist, professional or the thousands of existing TeleRay sites, including 38 of the country’s top 50 medical centers. Patients can always store and share their studies at no cost.
CEO at TeleRay
Images and reports are accessible anywhere on any device. Whether it’s a desktop PC, tablet or cell phone, you can view, share, exchange and finalize reports.
Commonly, reports are created on ultrasounds and other modalities. TeleRay receives the report, adds an image link and site logo, and transfers into EMRs seamlessly. When a user clicks on the link, it opens an FDA-approved DICOM viewer with a complete radiology tool set. Measurements, annotations and more are automatically updated in the report. Users may build their own custom reports in the reporting module with multiple options including logos and signatures for finalization.
Stop using expensive PACS systems or non-compliant storage such as hard drives and flash drives and achieve compliant accessible image storage for dollars a day!
Live streaming of any modality such as ultrasound to place a specialist technologist or physician “in the room” virtually, to review the modality imaging and patient and probe positioning, all while consulting with the local technologist and patient in real time.
Remote modality controller, allowing for training or clinical review on, or service of, remote equipment.
Solving Global Problems
TeleRay focuses on image management and real-time collaboration with patients and peers alike.
The core power of the platform lies in the highly complex areas of image management and data sharing, particularly valuable for its peerless secure and compliant sharing of Protected Health Information (“PHI”). The TeleRay software suite shares full-fidelity DICOM images regardless of the location of the patient, provider, family member, or specialist. This solution is hardware agnostic and can be deployed far faster than competitive solutions on the market.
As an example, Duke Health recently confirmed the elimination of three separate vendors and cost reductions of 70% through the implementation of the TeleRay platform. By consolidating with TeleRay they will no longer need expensive reporting packages, external image viewing software, and a host of other technologies. The current OEM incumbents are ripe for disruption without practical competitive response.
TeleRay is not simply a radiology software company, which farms out services to others, or a telehealth / telemedicine company that uses third party software like Zoom in the background. It is a HIPAA-compliant, fully-secure healthcare communications platform that supports full-fidelity DICOM images through the cloud – all through internally developed technologies supported by ten (10) pending patents.
TeleRay is the healthcare software company that is changing the face of image management and patient data sharing on a global scale.
Background
In the 1990’s healthcare providers started using digital media (primarily CD’s) to move medical images and reports (“studies”). The COVID-19 pandemic created an accelerated shift to more modern web-based electronic exchange (“exchange”) but, even so, the CD remains the most common medium in healthcare today despite serious clinical disadvantages, including delay of care, re-scans (multi-billion dollar problem) etc. along with significant associated costs. TeleRay is designed to provide either solution (CD or exchange) based upon user preference with no change in clinical workflow. Since CD’s are still widely used (~5 million unique TeleRay CD’s change hands annually), every TeleRay CD opened creates an invitation to register for the exchange version, creating a significant network scaling engine. Based on TeleRay’s platform being able to occupy other disc burning solutions, there is an opportunity to quickly take the place of the existing legacy disc burning system to further expand the TeleRay network.
With this “best of both worlds” product, the company has built an enviable customer base including most of the top fifty healthcare systems in the US and thousands of installations which satisfied the traditional CD market as it started the switch to electronic exchange. Current customers appreciate a single user interface to exchange healthcare information, whether locally, regionally, or globally.
TeleRay’s US Customer Map
Coincidental to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused an explosion in the use of both telehealth and electronic exchange, in 2020 the company started to add telehealth components to the platform which allowed live patient or peer consultation between parties. To meet new levels of demand, emergency waivers were filed by large players such as Zoom; these technologies continue to be non-compliant with HIPAA and similar regulations since the end of the Emergency Use Act. Predictably, a slew of data breaches occurred which led to compliance mandates being reinstated. Due to its core architecture, TeleRay is a compliance leader and has never been breached.
Today, TeleRay serves large institutional customers and smaller individual practices that larger competitors cannot reach due to price, implementation and fundamental architecture challenges explored below. Furthermore, the TeleRay platform provides best-in-class remote access to acquisition devices and systems interoperability to solve workflow challenges across the healthcare continuum. Reaching this underserved market of practices and groups will augment the growth and support of the TeleRay network.
With over $15mm of systems, software and support plans sold to date, the current company growth rate is 77% YoY, likely to be further bolstered by significant negotiations with teleradiology and other providers, OEM’s, technology partners and retailers both domestically and internationally.
The company is debt free and has raised a total of only $2.5 million in friends and family development.
Why TeleRay is an Industry Game Changer
It is important to understand TeleRay’s fundamental advantages, especially when competitors make generic (and often inaccurate) claims to speed, security, cost and ease of implementation.
Design – Enables Truly Efficient Global Networking
The fundamental design of TeleRay facilitates an exponential (Metcalfe) network growth effect, whereas every other solution actively limits this by their use of outdated and less secure credentialing.
Metcalfe’s law relates to the value of a network and its potential, which depend on the amount of its endpoint to endpoint users.
A network becomes more valuable after each new user joins. With growing usership, the network, its users and data become a powerful asset, bringing tangible and intangible value to the network – for example, the future use of anonymized data for AI/ML which is outside the scope of this discussion.
Metcalfe’s law states that “the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users. As the physical cost of the network grows linearly, its value grows exponentially.”
Per the example below. The first network has three nodes, but the last one has thirty-six, making a huge difference in the number of possible connections.
Metcalfe is provable in practice; social media platform growth is based on this principle and explains why Facebook and other participants spent vast time and resources building their networks (the core value) before monetizing them through advertising.
In terms of market impact and demonstration of Metcalfe, TeleRay’s best analogy is that of banking.
In traditional banking, moving money is most efficient if the sender and recipient both share a branch since there are few security gateways to pass through. In healthcare this would be akin to sharing data within the local hospital network as most of TeleRay’s competitors do.
Alternatively, PayPal creates a true network effect so once a user is registered and credentialled, funds can be sent and received by anyone within the global network without incumbrance.
TeleRay represents the PayPal of radiology telehealth. As such, it can be used globally and inexpensively to impact the most challenging use cases, such as disparate (rural) health centers, across health systems, with cellular or Wi-Fi applications and on any device.
The principle of peer-to-peer (“P2P”) is critical to building a global healthcare network. Although it costs more to develop and is technically difficult, a truly global telehealth and exchange network is unachievable without this architecture. As mentioned, P2P architecture such as PayPal connects all users within the platform. “Hub and spoke networks” which effectively terminate beyond two parties – like those of competitors – are great for logistical plans such as shipping and closed networks. They do not provide the mechanisms for growth and connectivity on a global scale. Access to the entire network is paramount to scale success while security, speed, ease of use etc. become inherent to the system. As the minimum expectation of healthcare exchange and communication matures to “always works quickly and securely”, the value will be in the ability to reach the masses on a global scale- which is TeleRay’s mission.
Security
TeleRay offers private key encryption techniques to all platform transactions. Unlike standard HTTPS and public key encryption offered by competitors, TeleRay architected a system that is breach proof in practice, allowing it to offer a $2MM breach policy that is unique in the market. This is a marketing advantage but is more important from an approval and implementation perspective since it is the number one concern of any cloud user managing patient data and images.
Also, with the growth of modality use in POC, we have growth opportunities everywhere. We are a natural solution for POC systems.
Ultrasound is the fastest growing imaging modality in U.S healthcare, driving sufficient ubiquity in point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) that major medical societies are formally examining the implications of its rapid increase. Handhelds, portables, color doppler and other high-tech features are enabling ultrasound use to manage conditions not considered before. In a peer-reviewed paper published early this year in JACR, the group proposes defining POCUS simply: “The sonographic evaluation of a patient performed and reported in a patient evaluation and management encounter”. In other words, POCUS means faster care since evaluation is typically done by a non-radiologist. A patient may be interpreted by an ER doctor or nurse and sent to treatment without further delay which may result in better outcomes and reduced risks.
As POCUS grows, one of the primary concerns across healthcare sites – from enterprise hospital imaging systems to small outreach clinics and independent practitioners – is proper storage of these images and reports along with the ability to share them with specialists, other professionals and the patient. Typically, when the scanner’s hard drive fills up, it defaults to ‘FIFO’ or first-in-first-out protocol and begins automatically deleting studies. Aside from the obvious record retention implications, this would go hand in hand with a failure to bill for these scans. TeleRay CEO Tim Kelley said “We have witnessed sites that store additional images on a portable hard drive that goes in the doctor’s car every night- this is a risky and non-compliant choice that doesn’t have to be made”. He further expounded upon the fines that have been levied on physicians due to poor image stewardship practices.
The financial benefits to complete imaging and telehealth platforms are immense. Beyond the clinical and triage benefits, implementing a virtual care option which optimizes CTP coding and increases patient throughput can more than offset the revenue decline due to reduced in-person visits. Many professionals will be looking for technology to solve growing problems with access and care in 2021, and now there are solutions to manage the situation. Ensuring reliable, high-quality connection and fast access to additional data and images are key, which TeleRay resolves through cellular back-up where required. High quality tools help deliver a better patient outcome, which is the goal of any healthcare interaction.
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