Radiology, Untethered: Key Takeaways from Sirona’s CEO on The Imaging Wire
In a recent conversation on The Imaging Wire Show, Sirona’s CEO, Ken Kaufman, outlined why legacy PACS can’t meet the realities of practicing radiology today, and how Sirona’s cloud-native RadOS™ is designed to restore speed, flexibility, and profitability for practices.
From Blockbuster to Streaming: Why Legacy PACS Can’t Keep Up
Ken drew a vivid analogy during the discussion: the market is still “renting DVDs at Blockbuster” while the rest of the software industry has already transitioned to streaming. Radiologists read from anywhere, for multiple hospitals, yet they’re still toggling across fragmented tools that weren’t designed for distributed work.
“About 70% of the market is over 15 years old… the world has changed—PACS needs to change with it.”
What RadOS Is (and Isn’t)
RadOS™ is a 100% web and cloud-based platform; radiologists type a URL, log in, and read. Improvements roll out continuously, “We change and improve weekly—and all our customers need to do is refresh the browser,” shared Ken. Ken also distinguished between “storing in the cloud” and being built for the cloud. With Sirona’s architecture and AWS underpinning, customers offload scaling, performance optimization (including smart caching near reading locations), and a significant slice of cybersecurity and reliability burdens.
Traditional environments still rely on piecemeal viewer, worklist, reporting, dictation, and AI solutions from different vendors. RadOS™ unifies the worklist + viewer + reporting + AI-assisted workflow so radiologists stay in one place:
- LLM-powered clinical summaries surface context instantly.
- Focus Mode captures dictated content into the right structured fields.
- Pixel-to-Report moves measurements and image-derived data directly into the report, eliminating the need for copy-paste and reducing errors. “If AI or a tool measures a lesion, why retype 12 mm? It should flow straight into the report,” said Ken.
For hybrid and teleradiology models, the most significant challenge is maintaining consistency across different sites and modalities. Sirona’s patented ontology recognizes what a study is—regardless of source—and hangs it the way a radiologist wants. Standardization is especially critical when a reader covers dozens of hospitals. Ken said, “No matter where the image comes from, we know what it is and how to hang it.”
Burnout, Retention, and the Business Case
Many radiologists today read on multiple systems, and the clicks, window switching, and cognitive overhead add up quickly. RadOS™ aims to reduce friction, enable reading from anywhere, and increase throughput, supporting both retention and margins.
Ken shared a notable activation story: a large customer was onboarded in ~3 weeks, ramping up to hundreds of thousands of annual studies—a timeline that’s the polar opposite of the 9–12 month legacy installations. “We brought them live in three weeks… and they were reading ~700,000 studies annually,” said Ken.”
RSNA Invitation: Put RadOS to the Test
Ken’s closing challenge was simple: bring your own device to Sirona’s booth and read cases live, in a browser. It’s the most direct way to experience what “no-install” really feels like. “Bring your laptop. We’ll provide you with a URL and login credentials—and you’re reading. No downloads. No excuses,” said Ken.
Watch the full interview on The Imaging Wire.