Radiology requisition workflow · Built in Canada
SapienProtocol

No one can memorize every imaging guideline. Now no one has to.

SapienProtocol is requisition workflow software for radiology departments. It automates the protocol and scheduling steps your team already does by hand, and puts published appropriateness guidance — from CAR, ACR, and other recognized sources — in front of the ordering clinician — as reference, for them to weigh. It never gates an order, and never replaces a clinician's call.

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SapienProtocol
Reference · shown at order
Requested
MRI lumbar spine
Acute low back pain · no red flags · <6 wks
Usually not
appropriate
RATING 2 / 9
Imaging not indicated for uncomplicated acute low back pain without red flags.
Appropriateness Criteria · Low Back Pain · CAR/ACR-aligned · rev. 2024
CT head — suspected stroke
Acute focal deficit · within window
Usually
appropriate
RATING 9 / 9
Reference only. SapienProtocol does not gate, block, or modify the order — the clinician decides. Illustrative sample.

Unnecessary imaging, in numbers you can check.

Linked to the source. Not our marketing.

Up to 30%
of tests, treatments, and procedures examined were potentially unnecessary
CIHI & Choosing Wisely Canada
1M+
potentially unnecessary tests and treatments in Canada every year
CIHI & Choosing Wisely Canada
It isn't careless ordering. The guidance is scattered across sources no one has time to track — and every unnecessary exam takes a slot another patient is waiting for.

The evidence exists.

It's just never where the order is.

01
Guidelines are a moving target
Every society publishes its own. They update constantly. They sometimes disagree. Expecting an ordering clinician to cross-check all of it, mid-clinic, is the same rigged game as billing: a human against a body of information no human can hold. That's not a knowledge gap. It's a delivery problem.
02
Your radiologists became the lookup service
Protocol questions interrupt reads all day — because your referrers are conscientious enough to ask. The knowledge exists; it's just stored in your most expensive people, one phone call at a time.
03
The lookup happens after the slot is gone
Retrospective appropriateness review finds the issue when the scan is done, the slot is spent, and there's nothing left to reconsider. Reference guidance only helps if it arrives before the order, not months after.
One requisition, start to finish

The evidence rides along with the order.

As a requisition moves through your department, SapienProtocol adds what each step needs — the protocol, the booking category, the published guidance. The clinician holds the decision the whole way through.

Requisition in
MRI lumbar spine
Acute low back pain, no red flags
01 · PROTOCOL
Pre-fills the acquisition protocol
Technologist confirms
02 · SCHEDULING
Matches a booking category
From your jurisdiction
03 · APPROPRIATENESS
Shows the published rating
Usually not appropriate · 2/9
Reference · CAR/ACR-aligned
The clinician decides
Proceed, modify, or cancel
Order proceeds either way
SapienProtocol does the lookup. The clinician makes the call.
SapienProtocol

Three jobs your team does by hand. One workflow.

Each module automates or informs a step in requisition handling — and each keeps a person in charge of the decision. Nothing here diagnoses, and nothing gates an order.

Module 01
Protocol pre-fill
Workflow automation

Suggests the acquisition protocol for an accepted requisition — sequences, technique, coverage — with the CAR or ACR practice guideline, or your own departmental entry, it came from cited on every suggestion. The technologist reviews and confirms; any element is one click to override, and nothing reaches the scanner without their confirmation.

Operational benefit — less manual lookup, and consistency with your own departmental protocols. It assists a step the technologist still owns; it does not interpret images or make a clinical recommendation.
Module 02
Scheduling category
Jurisdiction lookup

Assigns a booking category for non-emergent requisitions by direct lookup against your jurisdiction's published wait-time framework — citing the framework's name, version, and date behind every assignment. No clinical inference from indication text. Anything that doesn't match, reads as ambiguous, or carries a flagged acuity term is escalated to a radiologist with no category assigned. STAT, same-day, ED, and inpatient cases stay out of scope, on your existing manual processes.

Operational benefit — booking efficiency and consistency with your jurisdiction's framework, less clerk lookup time. It is a table lookup, not a clinical urgency assessment.
Module 03
Appropriateness reference
Guideline lookup

Displays the published appropriateness rating for the requested study against the stated indication — drawn from recognized guideline sources including CAR, ACR, and others — with the matched scenario, its ordinal rating, the narrative, and the citation and edition date, always shown by default. Where nothing matches, it says so, rather than synthesizing a rating. The rating is reference for the clinician to consider; it never gates, blocks, or auto-modifies the order, and the ordering workflow proceeds identically regardless of what it shows. Architecturally independent from scheduling.

Operational benefit — consistency with published guidance and fewer unnecessary requests. It displays a published rating; it does not make an appropriateness determination or a diagnosis.
Workflow software — assessed as non-device

SapienProtocol does not diagnose, does not interpret images, and does not direct or restrict access to imaging. Appropriateness content is published reference information drawn from recognized guideline sources — including CAR, ACR, and others — shown for the ordering clinician's consideration; the clinician retains the decision to proceed with, modify, or cancel any study.

It has been assessed as non-device workflow software: it is not a diagnostic tool and does not require a medical device licence to deploy. Source guidance and edition dates are cited in-product and kept current on a documented cadence.

Operational quality, measured.

Fewer unnecessary exams — without a single awkward conversation with a referrer. Better guideline consistency, measured instead of assumed. And QI data your department can actually act on — patterns by referrer, exam, and site — instead of another dashboard nobody opens. When accreditation or a quality review asks how you manage appropriateness, you'll have an answer with numbers in it.

The questions you should be asking.

I'm a referring clinician — what changes for me?+
Very little, and that's the point. You order the way you always have. When published guidance is relevant to the study you're requesting, you see it right there — the matched scenario, the rating, and the source — as reference. You can act on it or not; the order goes through either way. It's the answer you used to phone a radiologist for, already in front of you.
I'm a booking clerk or technologist — what changes for me?+
Less lookup, same authority. Protocols arrive pre-filled from your departmental standards for you to confirm or override — nothing reaches the scanner without your sign-off. Booking categories arrive already matched to your jurisdiction's wait-time framework, with anything ambiguous handed to a radiologist instead of guessed. You stop hunting through references and keep every decision that's yours to make.
Does it slow down ordering or booking?+
No — it removes steps. The guidance and the pre-filled protocol appear inside the workflow you already use, so there's no separate tool to open and no extra clicks to proceed. The slow version is what happens today: a phone call to a radiologist, or a manual hunt through a reference no one has time for.
Does it block or change our orders?+
No. The appropriateness rating is reference — the ordering workflow proceeds identically whatever it shows. Protocol suggestions are pre-fills the technologist confirms, and nothing reaches the scanner without that confirmation. Scheduling categories come from a published jurisdictional table, with anything ambiguous escalated to a radiologist. At no point does the software gate, block, or auto-modify a decision.
Is this replacing physician or technologist judgment?+
No, and by design it can't. The ordering clinician keeps the decision to proceed with, modify, or cancel any study. The technologist confirms every protocol and retains responsibility for contrast administration and MRI safety screening, within their scope of practice. SapienProtocol surfaces information and automates the paperwork around those decisions — it doesn't make them.
Whose guidelines? Can we see why a study rated the way it did?+
Appropriateness content is drawn from recognized published guideline sources — including CAR, ACR, and others — with the matched scenario, ordinal rating, narrative, and citation plus edition date shown on every output. Scheduling uses your jurisdiction's published, versioned wait-time framework. You'll never be shown a rating or category you can't trace to a named, dated source — and where nothing matches, it says so.
Is it triaging or prioritizing patients?+
No. The scheduling module is a direct lookup against your jurisdiction's published wait-time framework — not a clinical urgency assessment. Non-matching, ambiguous, or flagged-acuity indications are escalated to a radiologist with no category assigned, and STAT, same-day, ED, and inpatient cases are out of scope, handled by your existing processes.
What happens to the data?+
It becomes your QI asset — appropriateness and workflow patterns by referrer, exam, and site. Canadian data residency, PIPEDA and provincial health-privacy compliant, same posture as everything we build.
Is SapienProtocol a medical device?+
No. It's been assessed as non-device workflow software: it automates workflow steps and displays published reference guidance, and doesn't require a medical device licence to deploy. It doesn't diagnose, doesn't decide, and doesn't gate imaging — the clinician always does.
Being in your corner doesn't stop at the requisition. SapienReq takes the intake burden off your team. SapienBilling makes sure you're paid for all of it.

See your ordering patterns.

A 20-minute walkthrough on your own order data. We'll show you where published guidance at the point of order would have been worth having in front of the clinician — and what those slots meant for the queue behind them.

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