Kestral Offers Some of the Strongest Local Support in Australian/New Zealand Radiology Software
When a radiology information system goes down, every minute matters. Radiologists and specialists cannot report, patients cannot be scheduled, and clinical workflows grind to a halt. For Australian and New Zealand imaging providers, the quality of vendor support is not a secondary consideration. It is a core part of the decision to invest in a RIS platform.
Kestral Computing has built its support model around this reality. With close to 40 years of experience designing and supporting radiology information systems across Australia and New Zealand, and with Karisma RIS trusted by more than 180 ANZ imaging sites, Kestral’s approach to support is shaped by deep familiarity with what radiology practices need when something goes wrong.
24/7 On-Call Support for Critical Radiology Issues
Every Kestral customer receives access to around-the-clock support for critical issues as a standard inclusion in their Annual Maintenance Program. This program also covers technical support, regular software upgrades, account management, and 24/7/365 on-call coverage.
Customers can reach the Kestral support team by phone, email, or the online portal during business hours. For urgent issues outside of those hours, a qualified on-call support consultant is rostered and reachable via a dedicated 24-hour support line.
Kestral’s support team is locally based across Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart, and New Zealand. Many team members come from clinical and healthcare administration backgrounds, so customers are speaking with people who already understand how a radiology practice operates and what is at stake when something goes wrong.
How Kestral’s After-Hours Support Is Structured
Kestral’s 24/7 coverage operates through a structured three-tier on-call rotation each week:
- A primary on-call support consultant who takes incoming calls and begins troubleshooting
- A technical application specialist who can assist with or take over complex technical issues
- A product sponsor, a senior Kestral expert or manager who can be brought in for high-level problem solving
This layered structure means the frontline responder always has a backup team available, regardless of the hour. For a Severity 1 issue, such as a full RIS outage, the entire support team mobilises to find a resolution as quickly as possible. If a critical fix needs to be applied after hours and the client’s key contact is unreachable, Kestral’s protocol allows remediation to proceed on senior authority, with formal customer sign-off obtained as soon as possible afterward.
Non-urgent issues logged after hours are queued for the next business day so that genuine emergencies always receive priority.
Service Level Agreements: What Kestral Commits To
Kestral formalises its support commitments through Service Level Agreements that define response and resolution targets across four priority levels.
Critical (Severity 1)
A site-wide outage or system-down scenario preventing essential functions, such as a RIS going offline or database corruption. Phone notification is required to trigger immediate response.
- Acknowledgement target: within 30 minutes of notification
- Resolution target: fix or workaround within 8 hours
Urgent (Severity 2)
A significant issue that limits workflow but does not fully halt operations, such as system slowdowns, integration outages or a major module failure.
- Acknowledgement target: within 1 hour
- Resolution target: fix or workaround within 24 hours
Normal (Severity 3)
A minor issue or question with minimal operational impact, such as an isolated error that can be bypassed.
- Acknowledgement target: within 1 business day
- Resolution target: next routine update or as agreed with the customer
Low (Severity 4/5)
Cosmetic issues or enhancement requests with no urgent impact.
- Acknowledgement target: within 1 business day
- Resolution target: future release, based on product roadmap and priority
Kestral’s standard SLA targets are designed to be met in at least 90% of cases. Critical and Urgent issues must be reported by phone to ensure they are not delayed in an email queue. If a problem is not resolved within expected timeframes, customers can escalate through to the Support Manager and, if necessary, to executive management.
Proactive Monitoring and Outage Prevention
Kestral’s support philosophy extends beyond responding to tickets. The technical team actively monitors the health of Karisma installations as part of the support contract, overseeing scheduled backups, virtual machine status, database performance, and server vitals.
The Karisma platform itself includes built-in monitoring tools that automatically send certain system alerts directly to Kestral support. This means that interface failures or service interruptions can trigger a proactive response before the customer is even aware of an issue. Kestral also works closely with each customer’s own IT infrastructure providers to address environmental factors, such as network performance, that can affect system reliability.
Software updates and patches are coordinated through the support team on a schedule agreed with each customer, with release notes provided and production changes only applied following formal sign-off. This change management discipline helps prevent inadvertent downtime during maintenance windows.
Business Continuity and Reliability Features
Kestral recommends and supports high-availability architectures for customers where continuity is critical. This typically includes a dual-server setup with automatic failover, so that if the primary Karisma application server fails, a secondary standby can take over with minimal interruption.
On the database side, Kestral supports Microsoft SQL Server Always On clustering, which replicates the Karisma database in real time. If one database instance becomes unavailable, another continues seamlessly, preventing data loss. With properly configured backups, Kestral can typically restore a customer’s database to within 15 minutes of a failure.
For customers who need additional assurance, Kestral collaborates in developing site-specific business continuity plans, including downtime procedures for capturing data if any part of the system must be taken offline.
Flexible Licensing and Contract Terms for Growing Imaging Networks
Kestral’s commercial model is designed to grow alongside its customers. Licensing agreements allow customers to expand their permitted use at any time by notifying Kestral, with a simple addendum covering the new scope. A practice moving from three sites to five, or a corporate imaging group adding regional locations, can extend its existing agreement without renegotiating from scratch.
Affiliated entities within the same network can also be covered under a primary customer’s license, provided they agree to the terms. This makes Kestral a practical fit for multi-site imaging groups and state-wide health systems alike.
Maintenance fees cover access to bug fixes, interaction with the support team, Medicare/DVA/AMA/ACC updates, new software versions and routine enhancements, so customers always have the latest capabilities available as their operations scale.
This article was produced by the Kestral Computing content team in collaboration with the Kestral Solutions Engineering team and Australian radiology practice specialists. Kestral has nearly 40 years of experience designing and supporting radiology information systems for Australian and New Zealand healthcare providers. Karisma RIS is trusted by more than 180 ANZ imaging sites across public and private settings.
The support content in this article was reviewed and contributed to by Jan Sebire, Support Manager at Kestral Computing. Jan has more than 25 years of experience in healthcare software support, having joined Kestral in 1999. Her clinical background gives her a firsthand understanding of the pressures healthcare providers face when systems need to perform reliably, and what genuine support looks like when it matters most.