About a month ago, following the retirement of Randall Oka, Intelerad's board of directors announced that Paul Lepage would be taking over as the company's new president and CEO.

HealthCare Business News checked in with the health IT veteran to find out what he has in store for Intelerad, why he is so excited about getting involved in the radiology industry and what to expect from the company at the upcoming RSNA meeting.

HCB News: You have been working in health IT for a long time but if I'm not mistaken this is your first executive role with a radiology company. What attracted you to imaging?

Paul Lepage: The field of medical imaging is undergoing tremendous changes and Intelerad is at the forefront of this digital transformation with several strategic initiatives.

We are developing new solutions, combining best-in-class functionality with modern and efficient UIs on a native, secure and elastic cloud-based infrastructure; a must to satisfy the growing scalability needs of our larger clients.

I was drawn-in by the possibilities of this market to continue the upward growth and productivity. As well as the satisfaction of health care providers via improved enterprise imaging workflows. I also feel that collaboration between healthcare providers and patients can be enriched by engaging portal solutions.

We are also investing in Research and Development and big data infrastructure to acquire and develop machine learning capabilities, providing our clients with data-driven insights, which can help them predict patient follow ups or optimize the reading capacity of a particular practice. These capabilities will only be successful if we continue our efforts at understanding what our customers need, will use and what drives their satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.

All these capabilities ultimately will also lead to improving the performance of health care systems, better patient engagement and faster access to care.

HCB News: Can you describe some of the goals you have for Intelerad over the next few years?

PL: I will give myself time to get started. My first day with Intelerad is November 1st.
Intelerad already has a well thought-out strategic plan and the team is on-track with the execution of its strategic roadmap.

In particular, I am hoping to support the team on some key objectives:
• To continue the good work on customer satisfaction, which is at the core of the Intelerad DNA through a number of well-planned initiatives.
• Our company is focused on the continued implementation of customer experience processes to better understand how to better serve our customers’ wants, needs and expectations.
• To invest in technology to satisfy the demand for scalability. We are already the leader in large-scale deployments and our clients continue their own successful growth.
• Continue to focus on the usability of the radiology workstation with our focuses on improved worklists, viewers, analytics as well as by leveraging technologies like voice recognition and machine learning capabilities just to name a few.
• To expand our presence and our market share in the U.S. We already service several of the largest radiology service providers and we are expanding on focus to service multi-facilities health systems.

HCB News: Will you be attending the RSNA meeting in Chicago? Have you ever attended before?

PL: Yes and I am looking forward to it. I have attended HIMSS events over the years but this will be my first RSNA.

I look forward to meeting as many customers and partners at this year’s event as possible. The team has done a great job at meticulously planning out the event over the years. We have some key announcements which strengthen our positioning in the market leading up to the show.

HCB News: What should visitors expect to find at the Intelerad booth in the exhibit hall?

PL: As mentioned earlier, we are developing new cloud-based solutions which we will be demonstrating at RSNA. We have already announced our new cloud-based patient portal that will make a difference in patient satisfaction and patient engagement, and there will be some other new cloud products announced by the end of the year.

Regarding Artificial Intelligence, we will be showcasing some key clinical AI algorithms that we are enabling for our clients through our partner’s platforms, and we will have some work in progress around predictive analytics powered by machine learning.

This is also a great opportunity for our continued dialogue with customers, partners and prospects.

HCB News: Are there any other upcoming announcements we should expect from Intelerad looking toward 2019?

PL: As you have seen, we have just been recognized by KLAS as the most successful PACS vendor in the US for the last 2 years, both in a number of new clients and in terms of average study volumes. We are really proud that the report “PACS 2018 From Selection to Go-Live” highlights that 98% of our clients are mentioning that they are considering Intelerad part of our long-term plans. This is a great recognition and a strong source of motivation for our entire team to continue the efforts towards continued client satisfaction.