Steve Baker has been an MRI technologist for more than 20 years. He’s acutely familiar with the industry and realized he and other professionals in the field could do better.
So in 2008, Baker started a company, at the time called MRI Protocols, that would help standardize and make best practices within medical facilities easily shareable.
Now called Radiology Protocols, the company has nine full-time and a handful of part-time team members and is quickly outgrowing its office space in the IC CoLab. Baker says Radiology Protocols, which is now in or implementing in 130 hospitals, has been very well received by its users, in large part due to its ability to save time and money by helping cut out human error.
“There’s so many varying technical settings that it’s very easy to set the machine wrong or outside of an acceptable variance, now add in the fact that most facilities have more than one manufacturer,” Baker, the company’s founder and president, told Silicon Prairie News of the difficulties for an accurate MRI, PET scan or medical reading.
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Baker stresses Radiology Protocols is a service provider, not a content provider, meaning the company simply provides a platform for groups to input protocols and best practices based on local regulations, physicians’ preferences and specific machine capabilities.
Baker, who also is the former clinical chief of the University of Iowa’s MRI Center, describes Radiology Protocols as an “agnostic” system, meaning it allows data input regardless of manufacturer or system model. The service’s users are billed on a monthly subscription fee based on the number of machines they have, though there are discounts for educational facilities and other such organizations.
“One of the most common questions we get is, ‘Why hasn’t it been done before by one of the big companies?’” he said. “For them to create an agnostic service that will help hospitals scan better on all machines takes away from the stickiness of having their product be the only one used.”
Radiology Protocols will keep its office in the CoLab in addition to another office space in the same building that Baker says will comfortably fit about six employees.
As an unofficial kickoff to EntreFEST, Radiology Protocols will celebrate its growth and new office space by hosting an open house tonight (Tuesday) from 5:30–9:30 p.m. at the IC CoLab, 316 E. Court Street in Iowa City.
