Scott Mallonee Of Apryse On How Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care

An Interview With Jake Frankel

Utilize technology to streamline operations — PACS systems truly do streamline operations. With a PACS server and a zero-footprint web-based viewer, practices will be able to view images at any workstation without installing any software. All they would need to do is visit a locally (and securely) hosted website to view and manipulate the images captured.

As part of our series about “How Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Mallonee.

Scott Mallonee is MiPACS Head of Business Development and Healthtech at Apryse. He has more than two decades of IT and infrastructural experience. Scott’s experience designing and building toolchains within the healthcare and dental industry demonstrates the need for security and operational improvements so healthcare professionals can better prioritize patient care and data.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

In the early 2000s, LEAD Technologies, the developers of LEADTOOLS Imaging SDKs, created an end-user business line and product called MiPACS, which I’ve been fortunate to be part of for 20 years. Over time, I became the head of business development and healthtech and have continued in that role since our recent acquisition by Apryse.

The role was a natural fit. In school, I was a computer science major, which led to my first job installing digital radiology imaging for the dental industry. When I first joined MiPACS, I worked on software installations, technical configurations, technical support, and consulting. Since then, I moved into a more technical support management role and then into a sales role. I find it fulfilling to use my technical background to set realistic expectations for the sales process and be in a role where I witness digital transformation in healthcare, which in turn helps professionals prioritize patient care and ensure secure data practices.

Can you share the most interesting or most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?

I almost got arrested during a MiPACS installation and training in Saudi Arabia for taking photos of the massive houses in one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Luckily, the director of the hospital (who we’d just met with earlier that day) was informed of my predicament by our driver while the police were trying to address me in Arabic (which I don’t speak aside from basic “hello,” “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” etc.) and were examining my camera. The director of the hospital drove out to the neighborhood, called the local police chief, and argued with the police to let me go. They made me delete many images on my camera, but I got away with keeping some of them. It’s a good thing they did let me go, or I would have missed my flight home and would have instead been in a Saudi jail awaiting trial.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Then, can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Never expect/assume end-users to be completely computer literate and know the experience level of the audience that you are addressing. Once at a VA Medical Center, I was providing software training to the end-users in the dental clinic, and I asked the user to log into the computer. She had never logged into the computer at the VA before and didn’t even know how to press the “Ctrl + Alt + Del” buttons at the same time. She simply pressed “Ctrl,” then “Alt,” and then “Del” and was wondering why the computer wouldn’t let her log in using her newly obtained credentials. I had to take a step back and realize who my audience was and simplify my training technique for an audience who had never really used a computer before. It was difficult to train them on how to suddenly start capturing X-rays on a computer when all they had experienced in the past was capturing X-rays using traditional X-ray films. I was able to simplify my training methods and address the clinic staff as newcomers not only to digital dentistry but to computers in general.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Truly understand what you are selling. I know our products from front to back, including all the nit-picky details of how to configure virtually anything. I come from a computer science background and that has helped me immensely in understanding completely what our products are capable of (and what they aren’t).

Persistence in the sales process. Sometimes medical customers don’t know what they are missing without a proper PACS system. Being persistent in explaining how a PACS system works and the benefits of having your data all in one secure place eases customers’ tensions about the islands of data that have been generated over the years. In turn, this helps drive sales of our PACS system because it provides a cost-effective solution to the problems that they’ve created. Once the potential customer undoubtedly understands the value of having their images in one place, they are more prone to become an actual customer.

Finding the right companies to partner with domestically and abroad. We have several resellers across the world, in both the US as well as the Middle East, Eastern Asia, and Oceania. Our partnerships with these companies have driven many sales that we otherwise wouldn’t have had a chance to learn about or compete on.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

Using MiPACS to standardize a client’s dental imaging on a global scale. Currently, disparate systems are being used throughout different clinics to store dental images, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve images from one system to another. Standardizing these on a single system for all dental and/or medical images will revolutionize the care provided when visiting a different branch’s facility in another city, state, country, etc.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about Digital Transformation in Healthcare. I am particularly passionate about this topic because my work focuses on how practices can streamline processes to better serve their patients. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like for a medical practice to engage in a digital transformation?

Digital transformation is the process of updating existing business operations to include digital solutions that help accelerate product pipelines and aid overall operational efficiency. For the medical field, this can look different depending on what process is being updated. So much data is constantly being collected from dozens of different machines in addition to all the patient data; this can create barriers to the overall digital transformation of healthcare.

Physician handwriting is notorious for its illegibility. With digital transformation, instead of taking physical notes, which may or may not be deciphered later, any relevant information can be input directly into a system for easy access or digitally transcribed using AI tech. Another example of where digital transformation can happen is when it comes to data collected by machines like ultrasound. Traditionally, the data collected on these machines is housed on the device itself, making the information captured siloed and hard to obtain from any other facility. By implementing a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System), like MiPACS, healthcare providers can better store and access patient data across facilities.

What are the specific pain points that digital transformation can help address in a medical practice?

After image collection, many scans remain in a digital wasteland, floating through the abyss. Far too few healthcare institutions securely store images. By organizing these images using a PACS system, there is no need to search within the abyss, thus saving time, frustration, and money. Often, smaller healthcare institutions do not have PACS systems in place, leaving the stored data isolated for eternity until the device dies. Then, you lose all your images or, at least, have a hard time recovering the data.

What are the obstacles that prevent a medical practice from engaging in a digital transformation?

One of the biggest obstacles to digital transformation is budget and centralization. Smaller healthcare facilities often have a small tech budget for maintenance and new implementation. When combined with major pricing disparities depending on the digital services being utilized, updated digital processes are far too often out of the budget. This is further underscored by the fact that many medical devices don’t include the proper modules that allow the device to communicate with a larger system.

Managing a healthcare facility is more challenging than it has ever been. Based on your experience or research, can you please share with our readers a few examples of how digital transformation can help a medical practice to provide better care? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

Data can be compiled and organized in an understandable, easily accessible format to help streamline patient care via data centralization. This can give authorized staff and patient users access to vital data to inform care plans, even if located at a different but related healthcare facility. This data centralization can aid patient care by providing staff with any and all relevant images and information. On the patient side, if a pregnant woman moved across the state and needed to resume prenatal care with a different physician located closer, the new physician could have access to the scans already conducted from day one of taking over patient care.

Can you share a few examples of how digital interactions or digital intake processes can help create a frictionless patient experience and increase access for patients?

Digital transformation can help create applications and technology that healthcare professionals can use to streamline documentation and create healthcare administrative efficiency through data organization systems. Also, with highly sensitive personal, financial, and medical information being part of healthcare records, there are many places for system vulnerabilities that can result in data breaches. Proper healthcare transformation can effectively secure and protect both user and patient data, reducing overall information vulnerability. This ensures that patient service and data are not affected by malicious actors.

Based on your opinion and experience, what are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Effective Medical Practice” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1 . Find and vet the right vendors to partner with. Medical device vendors often charge an alarming amount for DICOM compliance in their products. For example, an ultrasound device might cost $20,000, but if it is not DICOM-compliant, it cannot communicate with a PACS system. The ultrasound vendor might charge an additional $7,500 to enable DICOM compliance on the ultrasound device.

Medical practitioners should know from the start how much a device is going to cost and make certain that it is DICOM-compliant and can communicate with a PACS system before purchasing. I have run into a combination of working with practices that have devices that are not DICOM-compliant while other practices have devices that are DICOM-compliant. It is a mixed bag, but those without DICOM-compliance are often faced with large fees to enable DICOM-compliance on their existing devices. Working with a company from the start will ensure that the medical device is DICOM-compliant and will make transitioning to a PACS system much easier and much more affordable.

2 . Utilize technology to streamline operations — PACS systems truly do streamline operations. With a PACS server and a zero-footprint web-based viewer, practices will be able to view images at any workstation without installing any software. All they would need to do is visit a locally (and securely) hosted website to view and manipulate the images captured.

Without a PACS system, practices generally store images on the device itself, using the internal storage of an ultrasound device, for example. Those images stay there forever until the machine dies or runs out of disk space. The only place you can view them is on the device itself. Implementing a PACS system, even in a small practice, can be beneficial to the practice because they are no longer restricted to viewing images on the device that they were captured on. Plus, images stored in a PACS system can be much more easily backed up.

3 . Leverage operating systems to centralize data. We have many customers with more than one location, and centralizing their data allows them, for example, to have a radiologist at one location read and report on images captured from another location. Additionally, if patients are referred to another location for a particular specialist, that specialist can view images captured from the original location that the patient visited.

4 . Prioritize patient care and data security. A PACS system requires some IT responsibility to ensure that data is backed up and properly secured. It does not back itself up unless you configure it to do so, and the “3,2,1” rule is suggested to ensure that data is properly backed up.

The “3,2,1” rule is a popular backup strategy that aims to protect data by keeping multiple copies of the data in separate locations. Three copies of the data should be made — the original and two backup copies. Two different types of media should be used to backup data, such as a hard drive, USB drive, DVD, or cloud storage. One copy of the backed-up data should be kept offsite, such as in the cloud. By mitigating single points of failure and protecting against corruption, redundancy ensures the safety of critical medical image data. It plays a pivotal role in disaster recovery, adapting to evolving technologies, and meeting compliance requirements. Diversified storage and off-site backups, as recommended by the rule, effectively mitigate various risks, contributing to the overall security and reliability of critical data.

5 . Store data securely and update systems frequently — Using disk-level encryption locally on devices and at the server level will ensure that medical image data is stored securely and will not be compromised even if the device is stolen or if the backup media is lost or stolen.

Additionally, keeping systems up to date is essential in protecting data from attacks such as ransomware. Windows 10 will reach end-of-life on October 14, 2025. It will not receive security updates after that date. New workstations should be configured using Windows 11, and any existing Windows 10 workstations should be upgraded to

This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!