Dr Nol is one of the leading speakers for the Digital Hospital of the Future a leading healthcare conference to be held in Sydney 7-9 December. We spoke to Dr Nol recently about his background and the challenges and opportunities for the 
imaging industry.
Dr James Nol is the Chief Medical Radiation Practitioner and the Operations Director at Blacktown & Mt Druitt Hospital NSW. In his current role, Dr Nol developed and implemented the Open Access, Radiology Reporting on Demand, Imaging Paper Printing in Australia and the multi skilling programs for Medical Radiation Practitioners. Winning the NSW Health Baxter’s Quality Awards in 2004 and was the Finalist of 3 other quality and innovation projects. He is currently working on a new project, MR Screening – The New Paradigm.
What are two of your key career highlights?
OPEN ACCESS. the Golden Hour in ED is essential. For example If a diagnosis is made and treatment starts within the first hour of a stroke, the patient has a higher chance to recover with a minimal damage and saves the patient and health care system a long journey in Rehab.
24/7 qualified Radiologist reporting service availability, within an hour of referral to Imaging has provided the most reliable diagnostic service, raising the confidence of ED clinicians to apply the best clinical care and pathway leading to better patient recovery and discharge.
As you introduced multi skilling programs for Medical Radiation Practitioners can you tell me why/how multi skilling is a must for a hospital of the future? and what challenges are we still yet to overcome in the multi skilling area?
Multi skilling equips Medical Radiation Practitioners with a multidimensional understanding of anatomy and pathological findings. As a result the diagnosis have a higher confidence and accuracy. I have seen cases where the MRP have performed an Ultrasound, CT and MRI for the same patient and at each examination the MRP modified the examination based on what they have realised from the previous modality. In addition Multi skilling creates more confident and more productive MRP. It is a phenomena that in a multi skilled department, MRI unit can perform 10 thousand examinations a year where in a traditional department the average workload is 4000 MRI examinations a year.
Australia faces a major challenge on how to convince the rest of the country to adopt multi skilling as they have been fighting against it since 2004.
Without giving it all away can you highlight what you will be discussing at the conference and why you think it is a must-see session
Australian Imaging Department/clinics still operate on the 1980 paradigm when CT scan started becoming the golden imaging tool.
Unfortunately the Golden Tool has a dark side called Ionising Radiation. According to the FDA 1 in every 2000 patients having CT examinations will probably develop a fatal cancer due to the mutated cells caused by Radiation. the 2020 paradigm will veer Australia away from risky technologies and move towards safe and higher confidence technologies.
The conference is called Digital Hospital of the Future. What are the two key challenges that you see coming up for hospitals in your field?
The challenges from Imaging point of view is to catch up with Europe and the USA at 2 fronts. First is to reduce the extreme dependence on diagnostic tools such as Imaging and pathology and then increase clinicians skills in bedside diagnosis. The other challenge is to be in line with Europe and the USA with the use of MRI and Ultrasound modalities and reduce the referrals to ionising Radiation modalities.
Dr Nol is speaking at The Digital Hospital Conference Dec 8 – The Future of Imaging in Australia
Find out more about the Conference and get your 10% discount by using code L6285DD5
The official hashtag for the conference is #DigitalHospAU16