By Nalin Jain and Robin Keeney

Despite spending more on healthcare than any nation, the U.S. health system ranks last or next to last on high performance dimensions when compared to health systems of six other developed nations — Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (Davis et al., 2010).

In recent years, new medical knowledge has raised concerns about the safety of radiation used in some medical diagnostic imaging tests. But until now, a program to accurately measure how much cumulative radiation patients receive over their lifetime while getting medical treatment has not been available.