echo
AI receptionist directly integratedwith Aura
Every call, text, and web form answered in under a second and booked straight into Aura, under the scheduling rules you already work by.
On this page
- 01What is Aura?
- 02Key takeaways
- 03What does Echo read and write in Aura?
- 04Why do Aura practices miss patient calls?
- 05What does Echo do inside Aura?
- 06How does Echo connect to Aura?
- 07How Echo Booking compares
- 08How is Echo different from a generic AI receptionist?
- 09Everything on one phone
- 10Frequently asked questions
Radiology RIS integration guide
How Echo works with Aura
Echo Booking is an AI receptionist for Comrad Aura, built for radiology practices. It answers every call 24/7, reads the referral, each procedure's preparation requirements, and the rooms and technologists at each site, then books the requested procedure into the right room for the right length, with the referrer recorded, while the caller is on the line.
Comrad describes Aura as managing the patient journey from booking to examination to reporting and referrer updates, and the booking step is the one still done by phone. A patient rings holding a referral written for a radiologist, for a procedure with preparation requirements they have never heard of, to be placed on a room or a scanner that can do that procedure for the length of time it takes. That is what makes the phone expensive in radiology: the caller cannot interpret their own referral, and whoever answers has to identify the procedure, screen for it, and place it on the one resource that can do it before anything is booked. Echo answers that phone, every call and text, day and night, reads the referral, the procedures, and the schedule out of Aura, and books the procedure into a real room at the right site while the patient is still on the line.
Background
What is Aura?
Comrad Aura is a Radiology RIS (radiology information system) that radiology groups, imaging centers, and hospital imaging departments use to manage imaging orders, exam scheduling, and reporting.
Echo is the AI receptionist that integrates directly with Aura: it answers every patient call and text 24/7, reads your the referral and the referrer, sites, rooms and technologists, procedures with their durations and preparation requirements, the appointment schedule, and patient records, and books the referred procedure into a room that can do it at the right site for the block it needs, reschedules and cancels, creates the patient record, and records the referrer, preparation answers, and call notes against the appointment, writing every result back into Aura in real time.
Aura is made by its own vendor and is not affiliated with Echo. See the official Aura site for their product details.
Hear it for yourself
A real call from inquiry to booked appointment.
Echo in action
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What Aura practices see
- Fewer front desk labor hours
- 50–80%Fewer front desk labor hours
- More appointments booked
- 20–30%More appointments booked
- To full ROI
- 1 monthTo full ROI
- After-hours calls answered
- 100%After-hours calls answered
- Pickup time
- < 1 secPickup time
- Always answering
- 24/7Always answering
In a live practice, Vanguard Interventional Pain Specialists runs reminders, intake forms, and after-hours calls through Echo across three locations, in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
In short
Key takeaways
- A direct, 100% two-way integration with Aura: Echo reads your the referral and the referrer, sites, rooms and technologists, procedures with their durations and preparation requirements, the appointment schedule, and patient records and writes appointments, reschedules, and notes back in real time, not a message queue.
- Your Aura scheduling logic is Echo's: which provider, which exam types, how blocks are grouped and sequenced, how tightly the day packs. It books the slot your staff would have chosen, not simply the next open one.
- Insurance eligibility and benefits are checked before the visit, so patients arrive verified rather than surprised at check-in.
- Practices book 20–30% more appointments and cut front desk labor hours by 50–80%, and most reach full ROI within the first month.
- 100% of after-hours calls are answered, triaged against your protocols, and booked or escalated, nothing goes to voicemail.
- Up to 80% of inbound referrals are booked automatically, so referrals stop expiring in a fax tray while the patient books elsewhere.
- Live in about 2 hours: roughly 30 minutes to enable the Aura API, then up to 2 hours configuring your booking rules with Echo's team.
- HIPAA-compliant by design and covered by a signed Business Associate Agreement (BAA). Keep your number and your Aura workflows, no migration.
Depth of integration
What does Echo read and write in Aura?
Echo works inside Aura rather than alongside it. It reads the schedule before it answers, books while the patient is still on the line, and writes the result back to the chart in real time. Nothing waits in a queue for your front desk to re-key in the morning.
Reads
What Echo can see in Aura
- the referral and the referrer
- sites
- rooms and technologists
- procedures with their durations and preparation requirements
- the appointment schedule
- patient records
Writes
What Echo does back to Aura
- books the referred procedure into a room that can do it at the right site for the block it needs
- reschedules and cancels
- creates the patient record
- records the referrer
- preparation answers
- call notes against the appointment
Stays the same. Your Aura sites, rooms, procedures, preparation requirements, referral triage rules, and attendance confirmation stay exactly as they are. There is no migration and no rebuild, and patients keep calling the number you already publish.
A generic answering service hears 'my doctor wants me to have a scan' and writes it on a message pad. Echo reads the referral and the schedule in Aura, so an 8 p.m. call about a contrast CT a GP referred ends with the procedure booked in the right room at the right site, the referrer recorded, the fasting instruction given, and the implant questions asked and noted.
Three ways software connects to Aura, and which one this is
- Message capture.
- The service never touches Aura. It collects the patient’s details and hands your team a message to enter. The work is recorded, not removed, and the appointment does not exist until somebody types it.
- Scheduled sync.
- Data moves between Aura and the tool on an interval. It is a real integration, but the tool is quoting a schedule as it stood at the last sync, so two callers can be offered the same slot and double-bookings surface after the fact.
- Real-time read and write.
- The tool queries Aura live during the call and writes back before the call ends. The slot it offers is open at that moment, and the booking is in the chart by the time the patient hangs up. This is how Echo connects to Aura.
The problem
Why do Aura practices miss patient calls?
The solution
What does Echo do inside Aura?
- The phone is where the patient journey actually startsComrad describes Aura as managing the patient journey from booking to examination to reporting and referrer updates, and the booking step still begins with a phone call. It arrives while the front desk is checking in a patient, confirming attendance for tomorrow, and answering a referrer's fax, and the caller who reaches voicemail takes their referral to the practice across town that picked up.
- Answers before the second ring, 24/7Echo picks up in under a second on every call, and handles texts, emails, and web forms on the same footing. Evenings, weekends, the morning fax pile, and the check-in rush are all covered, so the phone stops capping how many referrals the practice can actually turn into booked procedures in a day.
- The caller is reading a referral they cannot interpretA patient ringing to book is holding a referral written for a radiologist, not for them. They can read the referrer's name and perhaps the word ultrasound. Whoever answers has to establish which procedure is actually being requested, whether the practice performs it at that site, and whether it needs to be triaged before it can be booked at all, and do that in the first minute of the call.
- Books the procedure the referral asks forEcho reads the referral and the referrer in Aura, confirms the procedure and the site with the caller against what was referred, and books that procedure rather than the caller's paraphrase of it. Where your team has marked a procedure for referral triage, Echo captures the referral details and hands the decision to a person instead of booking around it. When the referral has not reached Aura yet, Echo records the referrer and the requested procedure so the booking is ready the moment it does.
- Preparation requirements decide whether the appointment happensAura gives patients access to their procedures and preparation requirements once they are booked, but the requirements have to be right at the point of booking. Fasting, contrast, a full bladder, medication timing, an implant that rules out a scan entirely: a booking made without asking those questions on the call becomes a patient turned away at the door and a slot that stays empty.
- Asks the preparation questions and gives the instructions on the callEcho reads the preparation requirements Aura holds for each procedure and runs them on the call: fasting, contrast, a full bladder, medication timing, and the implant questions that rule a scan out. It tells the patient what to do before they arrive and records the answers in Aura. Anything that needs a technologist's or radiologist's judgement is flagged and handed to the team, not booked around.
- Every procedure takes a different amount of time on a different resourceA radiology schedule is not one calendar. It is a set of rooms and technologists, each able to do certain procedures, each procedure taking its own length of time, with some requiring a radiologist on site. The person answering the phone is being asked to place a procedure they have just had to identify onto exactly the right resource for exactly the right duration, while the caller waits.
- Books the right room, at the right site, for the right lengthEcho reads the rooms and technologists at each site, which procedures each can do, and how long each procedure takes, and books to them. An ultrasound lands in an ultrasound room with a sonographer for the block it needs, a CT with contrast takes the longer slot on the scanner that runs it, and nothing is booked onto a resource that cannot perform the procedure or into a slot too short to finish it.
- Referrers phone too, and they are the practice's customersAura is built to enhance connections with referrers, and a referrer's practice ringing to book a patient, chase a report, or ask whether an urgent case can be seen today is the call the practice can least afford to miss. When it lands in the same queue as every other call, a referrer who waits on hold twice starts sending patients somewhere that answers.
- Recognises a referrer and routes them differentlyEcho recognises a caller from a referrer's practice, books their patient into Aura with the referrer recorded on the appointment, and escalates an urgent case or a report query to your team immediately by the channel you choose. A referrer never waits on hold behind routine patient bookings, and their patient's booking lands in Aura before the call ends.
- A missed appointment is a scanner sitting idleAttendance confirmation reduces the number of patients who do not turn up, but a cancellation or a no-show on a scan booked weeks ago is still an expensive hole, and the patients who could take it are the ones who were told the next opening was in three weeks. Filling it means someone stopping other work to ring down a list, which is why the hole usually stays open.
- Refills the released slot from your list within minutesThe moment a cancellation or a no-show opens a slot, Echo offers it by call and text to the patients your team has listed for that procedure at that site, in the order you choose, books the first who accepts, and writes it back into Aura. A scanner cancelled at 9:40 becomes a filled afternoon rather than a hole nobody had time to work.
How it connects
How does Echo connect to Aura?
Connect to Aura
We link Echo to Aura and map your providers, exam types, and scheduling rules during onboarding.
Configure your front desk
Tell Echo how you greet patients, book, work recall, and handle after-hours. It learns your setup, so you don't rebuild around it.
Go live
After a dry run and the signed BAA, Echo starts answering calls and texts and writing every result back into Aura.
How Echo Booking compares
Don't buy another tool. Buy less work.
One patient request
Turn calls, texts, and emails into booked appointments
Incoming call, text, email, or fax
Deep integrations, so Echo knows the patient before saying "Hello"
Custom scheduling rules, so no patient lands in the wrong slot
Booked on autopilot
Echo finishes
How does Echo handle an imaging order from fax to follow-up?
- Calls, texts, emails and faxes all land in one place
- Answered 24/7, including nights and weekends
- Speaks with each patient in their own language
- Identifies who it is and what they need
- Picks up the thread instead of leaving a message to return
Step 1 of 7
Incoming call, text, email, or fax
- Calls, texts, emails and faxes all land in one place
- Answered 24/7, including nights and weekends
- Speaks with each patient in their own language
- Identifies who it is and what they need
- Picks up the thread instead of leaving a message to return
Why practices choose Echo
How is Echo different from a generic AI receptionist?
Only three things matter: whether it knows your booking logic, whether it completes the work inside your system, and what it costs your front desk to adopt.
- Scheduling rules engineEcho lands the slot your front desk would have picked, inside Aura, not whichever one happens to be open.
- Deep integrationsEcho reads and writes the fields your workflow actually runs on in Aura, so the work leaves your desk instead of coming back as a task.
- Mobile firstOne light app that pings your team only when a person is genuinely needed. No dashboard to check each morning.
| Capability | Echo BookingCarries the work to done | Generic AI voice botAnswers, then hands it back | Aura on its ownThe system you already run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom scheduling logic | Your providers, visit types, block rules, and how tightly the day packs, inside Aura. Echo lands the slot your staff would have chosen. | Reads out any open slot, with no way to know your preference | Holds your rules; someone still has to apply them on the call |
| Books directly in Aura | Booked, moved, or cancelled in Aura in real time, under your rules. | Read-only at best, so the request stops at a person who can enter it | Staff, by hand, once someone answers |
| Proactively reminds, recalls, and backfills cancellations | Works reminders, recall, and the waitlist on a schedule and books the result on the spot. | Inbound only. It waits to be called | Report only: it lists who's due, it doesn't call them |
| 70+ languages, spoken naturally | Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Tagalog and 70+ more, on the same number, switching automatically. | Usually one or two, often a separate number | |
| Writes back without transcription errors | Structured fields into Aura: patient, visit type, provider, time. Nothing is re-typed. | Hands over a transcript for someone to key in | Only as accurate as what your staff type in |
| Verifies insurance before the visit | Checks eligibility and benefits as part of booking, and flags what the patient will owe. | Can discuss coverage, but not confirm it | A place to record coverage, not a way to check it |
Done, start to finishPartly. Someone at the practice still finishes itDoesn’t do it at all
Mobile first, light by design
AI receptionist, in the palm of your hands.
Everything Echo does inside Aura reaches you the same way: one app, on the phone already in your pocket. There is no second dashboard to watch and no queue to work through in the morning, because the work is finished in Aura before it would have reached one.
Ask an Echo a question or complete an outstanding task
- Ask it to call a patient back, from your palm.
- Pull today's numbers without opening a report.
- No extra tab to monitor or workflow to change.
- Built to stay hidden and work for you.
- Get push notification when a human needs to step in.
Incoming messages
Patients reach you
Booking requests
New patients and reschedules booked straight into the schedule, by your rules.
After-hours calls
Nights, weekends, lunch, and every busy moment in between, answered, never voicemail.
Patient messages
Texts, emails, and web forms answered on their own, handed to your team when it matters.
Outgoing messages
Echo reaches patients
Related reading
Keep exploring
Runs on another system? Echo reads and writes in real time, verifying insurance and booking, confirming, and logging every result directly in MedInformatix, AbbaDox, Exa RIS, RamSoft, Karisma, Visage, Synapse RIS, Epic, Oracle Health, MEDITECH, eClinicalWorks, Athena, PrognoCIS, Practice Fusion, NextGen Office, Prompt, Acuity Scheduling, WebPT, Open Dental, Dentrix Ascend, Curve Dental, Oryx, Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Denticon, with no separate queue to reconcile and no migration.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Yes, as a product. Comrad's Aura API page describes secure, performant access to a practice's own Aura data for building referrer platforms and internal reports, with documentation for developers. Authentication, endpoints, and whether third-party vendors can be granted access are not stated publicly, so confirm the route with Comrad directly.
Comrad does not publish an HL7 or FHIR specification for Aura. Its site states that Aura is integrated with Medicare Web Services, My Health Record, PACS providers, voice recognition providers (naming PowerScribe 360), and secure message delivery systems, and that other vendor systems are connected, without stating the interface standard used.
Either. Comrad describes Aura as cloud ready and states that the system can be deployed as a server in your location or hosted in the cloud, with the choice tailored to the practice.
Comrad publishes Aura Care Connect as a patient self-service application offering online appointments, pre-arrival workflows, and attendance confirmation, and lets referrers make bookings on behalf of patients. It also lists SMS communication with patients and fax with referrers among its supporting applications.
Yes. It is a direct, two-way integration. Echo reads your referrals and referrers, sites, rooms and technologists, procedures with their durations and preparation requirements, the appointment schedule, and patient records, and it books, reschedules, and cancels appointments in Aura in real time. It creates the patient record when the caller is new and writes the preparation answers and call notes against the appointment.
It books from what it can confirm and records the rest. Echo looks for the referral in Aura first. When it is not there yet, Echo captures the referrer, the requested procedure, and the referral details from the caller, books the procedure under your rules, and notes that the referral is still to come so your team can match the fax to the appointment when it lands rather than starting the booking from scratch.
Echo does not book around it. If a caller reports an implant, a contrast reaction, a medication that changes the preparation, or anything else your practice flags for that procedure, Echo records the answer in Aura, tells the patient the team will be in touch before the appointment, and routes it to your technologist or booking team for a decision. The rules are yours; Echo asks them consistently and escalates the exceptions.
Yes. Echo speaks 70+ languages and switches automatically on the same published number, across calls, texts, emails, and forms. Preparation instructions are delivered in the patient's language, which matters because a fasting instruction that was not understood is a patient turned away at the door and a slot that stays empty.
Nothing in Aura changes. Your sites, rooms, procedures, preparation requirements, referral triage rules, and attendance confirmation stay exactly as they are, and patients and referrers keep calling the number you already publish. We connect Echo to Aura, map your procedures, room and technologist rules, preparation questions, and after-hours protocols, and Echo starts answering. The Aura integration is currently in beta: the two-way read and write is live for beta practices, and we onboard each one with a member of our team watching the first bookings land in Aura. Echo is HIPAA-compliant throughout.
It writes. Echo reads your live Aura schedule during the call, books the appointment while the patient is still on the line, and writes it back into Aura in real time, along with the patient record and the notes from the call. Nothing lands in a queue for your team to re-key, and there is no message waiting to be deciphered in the morning.
A message-taking service never touches Aura. It collects the patient's details and hands your team something to enter, so the appointment does not exist until somebody types it. A scheduled sync moves data on an interval, so it quotes the schedule as of the last sync and two callers can be offered the same slot. Echo queries Aura live during the call and writes back before the call ends, so the time it offers is genuinely open at that moment and the booking is in the chart by the time the patient hangs up.
Echo verifies insurance for Aura imaging centers as part of booking. It checks the patient's eligibility and benefits before the visit and flags what they are likely to owe, so the appointment is confirmed with coverage already established rather than leaving a verification task on your front desk's list. Most AI receptionists can discuss insurance but cannot check it.
Echo books to the scheduling rules you configure, not to the next open gap in Aura. It applies which provider or room an exam type belongs to, how long that exam really takes, how appointments are grouped and sequenced through the day, and how tightly the day should pack, so the slot it lands is the one your staff would have chosen.
Yes, and most imaging centers bring Echo in to replace the after-hours service and the daytime overflow line at once. A traditional answering service cannot see your Aura schedule, so the best it can do is take a message your front desk re-keys the next morning, and it usually only picks up after hours. Echo answers every call and text in under a second, day or night, reads your live Aura schedule, and books, reschedules, and confirms directly in it. Out of hours it triages against your protocols and escalates true emergencies to your on-call contact with the patient's details already attached. The patient leaves the call with a real appointment rather than a callback.
Yes. A self-service booking link only reaches the patients who go to your website, already know what they need, and never abandon the form, which is a small slice of demand. Most patients call, and they call to check insurance, reschedule, or describe a problem before they will book. Echo answers every one of those calls and texts, handles the questions and exceptions a form cannot, and books straight into Aura, so you capture the patients an online link never reaches.
About two hours of your time. Enabling the Aura API integration takes roughly 30 minutes, and configuring your specific booking rules, providers, exam types, and after-hours protocols takes up to two hours with Echo's team walking you through it. There is no migration and no rebuild, so most practices are live within days, not weeks.
Echo is one flat monthly fee, from $499, with unlimited AI calls, sized by providers and locations and quoted in writing before you sign. Texting, online booking, and insurance verification come with the Pro plan, and a one-time onboarding fee covers the Aura connection and a two-week trial with real patients. See /pricing for current plans.
No. Aura stays your system of record. Echo is a layer on top that handles the calls, texts, and forms, then writes the result back into Aura. There is no migration and no rebuild, and patients keep calling the number you already publish.
Ready when you are
Bring Echo to your Aura practice.
See exactly how Echo answers every call, text, and form for a practice running on Aura.