echo
AI receptionist directly integratedwith Exa RIS
Every call, text, and web form answered in under a second and booked straight into Exa RIS, under the scheduling rules you already work by.
On this page
- 01What is Exa RIS?
- 02Key takeaways
- 03What does Echo read and write in Exa RIS?
- 04Why do Exa RIS practices miss patient calls?
- 05What does Echo do inside Exa RIS?
- 06How does Echo connect to Exa RIS?
- 07How Echo Booking compares
- 08How is Echo different from a generic AI receptionist?
- 09Everything on one phone
- 10Frequently asked questions
Radiology RIS/PACS integration guide
How Echo works with Exa RIS
Echo Booking is an AI receptionist for Exa RIS, Konica Minolta's radiology information system. It answers every call 24/7, reads the schedule book, modality rooms, appointment types, and the referring physician's order, then books the exam into the right room for the length it needs, with prep given and screening asked, while the caller is on the line.
Exa RIS runs the imaging center out of one schedule book: a column per modality room, an appointment type per exam made of procedures that each carry a duration and their own exam prep instructions, scheduled against an order from a referring physician, with insurance verification and prior authorization built into the same screen. That is what makes the phone expensive in radiology. The patient calling at 6:45 a.m. to ask whether they were supposed to fast, or the referring office trying to place an urgent MRI at 7 p.m., is asking a question about an appointment type, a room, and an order, and answering it well takes someone who knows which room runs a contrast study and how long its procedures take. Echo answers that phone, every call and text, day and night, reads the schedule book, the appointment types, and the orders out of Exa RIS, and books the exam into a real opening in the right modality room while the caller is still on the line.
Background
What is Exa RIS?
Exa RIS is a Radiology RIS/PACS (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 Exa RIS: it answers every patient call and text 24/7, reads your the schedule book and its modality rooms, appointment types and the procedures and durations inside them, exam prep instructions, orders from referring physicians, and the patients flagged with a follow-up reason, and books the ordered exam into a modality room that runs it for the block its procedures need, reschedules and cancels, creates the patient chart with the referring physician and insurance details, and records screening answers and call notes, writing every result back into Exa RIS in real time.
Exa RIS is made by its own vendor and is not affiliated with Echo. See the official Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS: Echo reads your the schedule book and its modality rooms, appointment types and the procedures and durations inside them, exam prep instructions, orders from referring physicians, and the patients flagged with a follow-up reason and writes appointments, reschedules, and notes back in real time, not a message queue.
- Your Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS workflows, no migration.
Depth of integration
What does Echo read and write in Exa RIS?
Echo works inside Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS
- the schedule book and its modality rooms
- appointment types and the procedures and durations inside them
- exam prep instructions
- orders from referring physicians
- the patients flagged with a follow-up reason
Writes
What Echo does back to Exa RIS
- books the ordered exam into a modality room that runs it for the block its procedures need
- reschedules and cancels
- creates the patient chart with the referring physician and insurance details
- records screening answers and call notes
Stays the same. Your Exa RIS schedule book, modality rooms, appointment types, exam prep instructions, referring physician portal, and verification rules 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 'a scan of my knee' and writes it on a message pad. Echo reads the schedule book and the order, so a 7 p.m. call from a referring office ends with the knee MRI with contrast in an MRI room for the length both procedures need, the implant questions asked, and the fasting instruction given.
Three ways software connects to Exa RIS, and which one this is
- Message capture.
- The service never touches Exa RIS. 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS.
The problem
Why do Exa RIS practices miss patient calls?
The solution
What does Echo do inside Exa RIS?
- The schedule book is web based. The phone is not.Exa RIS put the schedule book in a browser, so a scheduler at any facility can see every modality room and pull the first available time. It did not put anyone on the phone at 6:45 a.m. when the first CT patient calls to ask whether they were supposed to fast, or at 7 p.m. when a referring office is still trying to place an urgent MRI before the weekend. Those calls go to voicemail, and an imaging order that reaches voicemail is one that can be sent to the center across town.
- 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. The 6:45 a.m. prep question, the 7 p.m. referring office, weekends, and the check-in rush are all covered, so the phone stops capping how many ordered exams the center can get into the schedule book in a day.
- Booking an exam means the right appointment type in the right roomIn Exa RIS an appointment type bundles the procedures an exam actually involves, an MRI with contrast is two procedures, and each procedure carries its own duration. The exam has to land in the modality room the schedule book has for it. Whoever answers the phone has to translate 'my doctor wants a scan of my knee' into that appointment type in seconds, and choosing the wrong one does not show up until a room is still occupied when the next patient is in the waiting area.
- Books the appointment type into the room it belongs inEcho reads your appointment types, the procedures inside them with their durations, and the modality rooms in the schedule book, and it books to them. A knee MRI with contrast takes the block both of its procedures need in a room that runs MRI, a screening mammogram lands in the mammography room, and nothing is written into a column that cannot perform the exam or into an opening too short to finish it.
- Most exams start with an order, and the caller rarely has itReferring physicians send orders through the portal or by fax, and the exam is scheduled against that order. The patient calling in knows their doctor wanted 'some imaging' and little else: not the exact exam, not the indication, not whether the order has arrived. The front desk spends the call hunting for the order, calling the referring office, or booking provisionally and hoping the paperwork catches up before the appointment.
- Books the exam the order calls forEcho reads the orders from referring physicians in Exa RIS, confirms the exam, the side, and the contrast with the caller against what was ordered, and schedules that study rather than the caller's paraphrase of it. When the order has not arrived yet, Echo captures the referring physician and the requested exam with the booking, so the appointment is matched to the order the moment it lands in the portal or the fax queue.
- Prep and safety screening cannot wait for the day of the examEvery procedure in Exa RIS can carry exam prep instructions, and the patient has to actually follow them: fasting before contrast, holding certain medications, no metal for MRI, implant and pregnancy questions that decide whether the exam can happen at all. If those questions are not asked and answered on the booking call, a room is set up for an exam that has to be cancelled at the door, and the next opening in that room is days away.
- Asks the screening and gives the prep on the callEcho reads the exam prep instructions attached to each procedure and delivers them before the patient hangs up: the fasting window, the medication hold, the arrival time. It asks the safety questions you define per exam, implants and pacemakers for MRI, contrast history and pregnancy where they apply, and writes the answers into the notes. A disqualifying answer is flagged and handed to your technologist rather than booked around.
- Insurance verification and prior authorization gate the appointmentExa RIS builds eligibility verification and prior authorization into the scheduling process and color-codes the schedule book by how much lead time insurance verification needs. That is the workflow. The phone is where it breaks: a caller booked into a slot that does not leave time for the authorization to clear becomes a rescheduled exam, and a rescheduled exam is revenue the center has to chase twice.
- Books inside your verification lead timeEcho follows the same lead-time rules the schedule book color-codes for insurance verification and prior authorization, so an exam that needs an authorization is never booked into tomorrow morning. It collects the insurance details and referring information on the call and writes them into the patient chart, so your team can start the verification the same day instead of reconstructing the call first.
- A cancelled MRI is an expensive hole, and the follow-up list only growsWhen a patient cancels a 45-minute MRI at nine in the morning, the room and the technologist sit idle unless somebody works the phones to fill it, while the same somebody is checking in walk-ins and answering the line. Meanwhile, every study flagged with a follow-up reason, the six-month recheck, the annual screening, sits on a list that Exa RIS keeps accurately and that nobody has a free hour to call.
- Refills the cancelled room and works the follow-up listWhen an exam moves to Canceled, Echo offers the opening to patients who asked for something sooner and need that exam in that room, books the first who accepts, and writes it into the schedule book. On a cadence you set, it calls and texts the patients flagged with a follow-up reason, in 70+ languages, books the recheck into the right room, and records the outcome, so the list Exa RIS keeps actually gets worked.
How it connects
How does Echo connect to Exa RIS?
Connect to Exa RIS
We link Echo to Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS.
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 Exa RIS, not whichever one happens to be open.
- Deep integrationsEcho reads and writes the fields your workflow actually runs on in Exa RIS, 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 | Exa RIS on its ownThe system you already run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom scheduling logic | Your providers, visit types, block rules, and how tightly the day packs, inside Exa RIS. 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 Exa RIS | Booked, moved, or cancelled in Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS: 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS 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, RamSoft, Karisma, Aura, 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
Konica Minolta describes the next-generation Exa Platform as having an open API that creates an integrated ecosystem with partner solutions, and its user manual documents API Users, rights, and an API Log inside Exa PACS/RIS. It does not publish a self-serve developer portal or endpoint reference, so the route for a new integration is worth confirming with Konica Minolta directly.
Yes. The Exa PACS/RIS User's Manual documents standard HL7 protocols as a transfer service for an application entity, an HL7 Global Config, an outbound HL7 Queue, and an inbound HL7 Receiver Log, alongside a DICOM modality worklist. Interfaces are configured by an administrator inside the application.
Konica Minolta describes Exa RIS as a completely web based application and documents Exa Cloud as fully operational with AWS, with customers choosing between its private cloud and the AWS public cloud. It has also announced Exa as a SaaS model. It does not publish on-site server specifications on its product pages.
Either. Konica Minolta offers Exa RIS standalone or as an integrated solution with Exa PACS and Exa Billing. The integrated Exa PACS|RIS runs on a single database, so a change to a patient or exam record is reflected across the platform.
Yes. It is a direct, two-way integration. Echo reads the schedule book and its modality rooms, your appointment types and the procedures and durations inside them, exam prep instructions, orders from referring physicians, and the patients flagged with a follow-up reason, and it books, reschedules, and cancels exams in Exa RIS in real time. When the caller is new, Echo creates the patient chart and records the referring physician and insurance details with it.
No. Echo reads which modality rooms exist at each facility and which appointment types belong in them, so a caller who needs a CT with contrast is only offered openings in a room that runs it, and only at facilities you have told Echo are interchangeable for that patient. If the soonest opening is at the site twenty minutes further away, Echo says so and lets the patient choose.
Echo books the exam anyway, within the rules you set, and captures the referring physician, the exam requested, and how the order is being sent, so the appointment carries everything your scheduler needs to match it to the order when it arrives through the portal or by fax. If you would rather hold exams without an order, Echo records the request and flags it for your team instead.
Echo does not book around it. If a caller reports a pacemaker, an implant, a contrast reaction, or a possible pregnancy, Echo records the answer in the notes, tells the patient the team will follow up before the exam, and routes it to your technologist or scheduler for a decision. The screening questions are yours; Echo asks them consistently on every call and escalates the exceptions.
Nothing in Exa RIS changes. Your schedule book, modality rooms, appointment types, prep instructions, and verification rules stay exactly as they are, and patients keep calling the number you already publish. We connect Echo to Exa RIS, map your appointment types, room rules, screening questions, and after-hours protocols, sign the BAA, and Echo starts answering. The Exa RIS 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 the schedule book. Echo is HIPAA-compliant throughout.
It writes. Echo reads your live Exa RIS schedule during the call, books the appointment while the patient is still on the line, and writes it back into Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS. 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS. 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS, so you capture the patients an online link never reaches.
About two hours of your time. Enabling the Exa RIS 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 Exa RIS connection and a two-week trial with real patients. See /pricing for current plans.
No. Exa RIS stays your system of record. Echo is a layer on top that handles the calls, texts, and forms, then writes the result back into Exa RIS. There is no migration and no rebuild, and patients keep calling the number you already publish.
Ready when you are
Bring Echo to your Exa RIS practice.
See exactly how Echo answers every call, text, and form for a practice running on Exa RIS.