echo
AI receptionist directly integratedwith Synapse RIS
Every call, text, and web form answered in under a second and booked straight into Synapse RIS, under the scheduling rules you already work by.
On this page
- 01What is Synapse RIS?
- 02Key takeaways
- 03What does Echo read and write in Synapse RIS?
- 04Why do Synapse RIS practices miss patient calls?
- 05What does Echo do inside Synapse RIS?
- 06How does Echo connect to Synapse RIS?
- 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 Synapse RIS
Echo Booking is an AI receptionist for Fujifilm Synapse RIS, built for imaging departments. It answers every call 24/7, reads the order, finds the first available appointment across your network locations, asks the modality and exam screening questions, and books the exam into Synapse while the caller is still on the line.
Synapse RIS already gives patients a portal to confirm, cancel, review their exam preparation, and fill in forms, and gives referring physicians a portal that shows every outstanding order request. That covers the people who log in. It does not cover the patient who calls the number on the referral slip at 6 p.m., the referring office phoning to move Thursday's CT, or the caller who wants to hear which site can scan them soonest. Those conversations are about an order, a modality, and a location, and answering them well takes someone who can see the Synapse schedule across the network. Echo answers that phone, every call and text, day and night, reads the order and the open slots out of Synapse RIS, and books the exam at the first location that can genuinely do it while the caller is still on the line.
Background
What is Synapse RIS?
Fujifilm Synapse RIS 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 Synapse RIS: it answers every patient call and text 24/7, reads your orders and their referring physicians, the open slots across your network locations, the exams each site performs with their durations, exam preparation requirements and the modality and exam screening questions, and the patients due a follow-up exam, and books the ordered exam at the first available location that performs it, reschedules and cancels with the exam information carried over, creates the patient record with the referring physician and insurance details, and records screening answers and call notes, writing every result back into Synapse RIS in real time.
Synapse RIS is made by its own vendor and is not affiliated with Echo. See the official Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse RIS: Echo reads your orders and their referring physicians, the open slots across your network locations, the exams each site performs with their durations, exam preparation requirements and the modality and exam screening questions, and the patients due a follow-up exam and writes appointments, reschedules, and notes back in real time, not a message queue.
- Your Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse RIS workflows, no migration.
Depth of integration
What does Echo read and write in Synapse RIS?
Echo works inside Synapse 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 Synapse RIS
- orders and their referring physicians
- the open slots across your network locations
- the exams each site performs with their durations
- exam preparation requirements and the modality and exam screening questions
- the patients due a follow-up exam
Writes
What Echo does back to Synapse RIS
- books the ordered exam at the first available location that performs it
- reschedules and cancels with the exam information carried over
- creates the patient record with the referring physician and insurance details
- records screening answers and call notes
Stays the same. Your Synapse RIS locations, exams, digital forms, patient portal, referral portal, and financial workflows 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 ordered a scan' and writes it on a message pad. Echo reads the order and the schedule across your network, so a 6 p.m. call ends with the contrast CT booked at the site that can do it soonest, the contrast history asked, and the prep instructions given, even for a patient who has never opened the portal.
Three ways software connects to Synapse RIS, and which one this is
- Message capture.
- The service never touches Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse RIS.
The problem
Why do Synapse RIS practices miss patient calls?
The solution
What does Echo do inside Synapse RIS?
- The portal serves the patients who log in, and many do notSynapse lets patients confirm, cancel, and self-schedule online, and plenty of them will. The rest call: the older patient who never activated the account, the parent booking for a child, the patient whose doctor told them to 'ring radiology'. Those calls arrive during the check-in rush and after hours, and a caller who gets voicemail about an ordered MRI rings the imaging center that picked up.
- Answers every caller the portal does not reach, 24/7Echo picks up in under a second on every call, and handles texts, emails, and web forms on the same footing. The patient who will never log in gets the same live Synapse schedule as the one who self-schedules, at 6 p.m., at the weekend, and during the check-in rush, so the phone stops capping how many ordered exams actually get booked.
- Outstanding order requests are patients nobody has reached yetThe referral portal shows referrers every order request that is still outstanding, which is useful visibility and also a running count of patients who have not been booked. Each one needs a call to find a time, confirm the exam and the contrast against what was ordered, and schedule it. When the phones are busy, that list only grows, and the referring office starts calling to ask why.
- Works the outstanding orders and books against themEcho reads the order and the referring physician in Synapse RIS, confirms the exam, the side, and the contrast with the caller against what was ordered, and books that study. It can also reach out to patients whose order is still outstanding, so a referral turns into a scheduled exam instead of a line on the referrer's dashboard.
- The first available appointment is on a screen, not in the conversationSynapse can find the first available appointment across network locations. A scheduler still has to explain it to the caller, agree which site they will actually drive to, and check that the scanner at that site runs the exam ordered. On a phone call that takes minutes the scheduler does not have, so the patient is often booked at the site they named rather than the one that could see them days sooner.
- Offers the first available location, out loudEcho reads the open slots across your network locations and the exams each one performs, and tells the caller where they can be seen soonest, within your rules about which sites are interchangeable. A patient willing to drive fifteen minutes hears that the other site has the MRI open on Tuesday, and chooses on the call.
- Screening forms only work if someone fills them inSynapse supports modality-specific and exam-specific digital forms, so the MRI safety questions and the contrast history can be collected before the patient arrives. The patient who booked by phone and never opened the link arrives with the form blank, and the implant question gets asked at the scanner door, where a flagged answer means a cancelled slot.
- Asks the modality and exam screening questions on the callEcho asks the safety and prep questions your modality and exam forms require, implants and pacemakers for MRI, contrast history and kidney function for contrast studies, pregnancy where it applies, and gives the exam preparation instructions before the patient hangs up. Anything that needs a technologist's or radiologist's judgment is recorded and routed to your team instead of booked around.
- A no-show is reported instantly and refilled slowlySynapse flags no-shows and cancellations in real time, to the department and to the referrer. Knowing about the empty 45-minute MRI block is not the same as filling it. Refilling it means finding a patient who needs that exam at that location and phoning them in the short window before they have made other plans, while the day's patients keep arriving.
- Refills the no-show slot with a patient who needs that examWhen a slot opens, Echo offers it to patients still waiting on that exam at that location, from the list and in the order you choose, books the first who accepts, and writes it back into Synapse RIS with the exam information carried over. The cancellation your dashboard just flagged becomes a filled block rather than an idle scanner.
- Follow-up recommendations are identified, then wait for a phone callSynapse identifies and categorizes the follow-up recommendations in a radiologist's findings and supports follow-up based on exam results. Knowing a six-month follow-up CT is due does not book it. Someone still has to reach the patient, answer their questions, and find a slot, and in most departments that call happens only when a team member has a free hour.
- Calls the patients with a follow-up dueEcho calls and texts the patients Synapse has flagged for a follow-up exam, in 70+ languages, answers their questions about why it was recommended at the level your team approves, books them at the right location, and records the outcome. It runs on a cadence rather than on whichever afternoon is quiet, so a radiologist's recommendation does not expire on a list.
How it connects
How does Echo connect to Synapse RIS?
Connect to Synapse RIS
We link Echo to Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse RIS, not whichever one happens to be open.
- Deep integrationsEcho reads and writes the fields your workflow actually runs on in Synapse 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 | Synapse RIS on its ownThe system you already run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom scheduling logic | Your providers, visit types, block rules, and how tightly the day packs, inside Synapse 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 Synapse RIS | Booked, moved, or cancelled in Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse 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, Exa RIS, RamSoft, Karisma, Aura, Visage, 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
Not publicly. Fujifilm's Synapse EIS/RIS page states that data from its modality-specific and exam-specific digital forms may be shared with reporting systems via HL7, but its site carries no developer portal, endpoint reference, or sandbox for Synapse RIS. The route for a new integration is worth confirming with Fujifilm directly.
Fujifilm offers Synapse Cloud Services for the full Synapse portfolio with private, public, and hybrid cloud delivery models, and states it has operated as a cloud service provider since 2005 with both Fujifilm-owned data centers and major public clouds. Synapse One for outpatient imaging centers runs in the AWS cloud.
Fujifilm lists pre-service patient tools that let patients digitally confirm or cancel appointments, review exam preparation requirements, complete forms, and check in before arrival, and a referral portal giving referrers 24/7 web access with dashboard notifications on outstanding order requests, no-shows and cancellations, and finalized results.
Yes. It is a direct, two-way integration. Echo reads your network locations and their schedules, orders and referring physicians, the exams each site performs with their durations, exam preparation requirements and screening questions, and the follow-up list, and it books, reschedules, and cancels exams in Synapse RIS in real time. It creates the patient record when the caller is new and records screening answers and call notes.
No. Echo books into the same Synapse RIS schedule the portal uses, so a slot taken online is not offered on the phone and a slot Echo books disappears from the portal. The portal keeps doing what it does for patients who log in; Echo covers the calls and texts from everyone else, and the exam reminders and forms Synapse sends still go out as they do today.
No. Echo reads which exams each location performs and offers only slots at sites that can do the ordered study, and only among the sites you have told Echo are interchangeable for that patient. When the first available appointment is at a different location from the one the caller named, Echo says so and lets the patient choose.
Echo does not book around it. If a caller reports a pacemaker, an implant, a prior contrast reaction, or anything else your modality or exam form flags, Echo records the answer, tells the patient the team will follow up before the exam, and routes it to your technologist or scheduler for a decision. The screening rules are yours; Echo asks them the same way every time.
Nothing in Synapse RIS changes. Your locations, exams, forms, patient portal, and referral portal stay exactly as they are, and patients keep calling the number you already publish. We connect Echo to Synapse RIS, map your exams, site rules, screening questions, and after-hours protocols, sign the BAA, and Echo starts answering. The Synapse RIS integration is currently in beta: the two-way read and write is live for beta sites, and we onboard each one with a member of our team watching the first bookings land. Echo is HIPAA-compliant throughout.
It writes. Echo reads your live Synapse RIS schedule during the call, books the appointment while the patient is still on the line, and writes it back into Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse RIS, so you capture the patients an online link never reaches.
About two hours of your time. Enabling the Synapse 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 Synapse RIS connection and a two-week trial with real patients. See /pricing for current plans.
No. Synapse 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 Synapse 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 Synapse RIS practice.
See exactly how Echo answers every call, text, and form for a practice running on Synapse RIS.