Based in the picturesque wine-making region of Bendigo, Victoria, Bendigo Health is a multi-service regional health organisation and the largest regional health provider in its state. The Medical Imaging Department at Bendigo Health provides extensive, high quality imaging services to inpatients of the Bendigo Hospital and Anne Caudle Centre campuses as well as outpatients referred from hospital clinics, specialists and general practitioners in Bendigo and surrounding areas.

Bendigo Health recently upgraded from Kestral’s legacy product RMS to the more robust and feature-rich Karisma RIS system. For the complex but well-rehearsed upgrade process, Kestral Support Consultant Asim Jaleel was onsite at Bendigo Health to ensure things went smoothly.

Thanks largely to the gifted staff at Bendigo Health, the changeover from RMS to Karisma went by with a minimum of fuss and only a few minor tweaks. Kestral support staff and programmers were available to assist with data migration from Bendigo Health's RMS system into Karisma – including Tony Farlie in Singapore who quickly made changes in RMS via remote access. End user training was also conducted in-house and the entire project was a group effort between Kestral and Bendigo Health to get things finished with little disruption.

Staff at the facility were in fact surprised at how rapidly the change was made, with Chief MIT and Medical Imaging Department Manager Luke Adorni asserting,

"I can't believe we have just wiped clean 16 years of knowing everything we know about RMS and starting from scratch with a new RIS and nobody has thought twice about it".

Deputy Chief MIT at Bendigo Health, Ean Conquer, recently provided feedback to Kestral on what he saw as the difference between RMS and Karisma. Mr Conquer found Karisma had a number of features that better suited the worklist, diary, integration and other needs of the facility, including;

• Easy navigation

• Simple to train others to use

• Improved, more interactive diary view

• Improved Medicare Online functionality

• More efficient workflow via report distribution options

• Flexible document design

• Ability to design/modify the program.

With staff enjoying the benefits of Karisma, coupled with their ability to learn new functionality quickly and easily, the MI Department was back in full swing in no time at all. Kestral is proud to have been a part of Bendigo Health’s continued expansion. We look forward to another 16 years and beyond as RIS provider for this celebrated facility.