From the November 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


When machines think: Radiology's next frontier
Sunday 8:30-10:15 a.m. Keith J. Dreyer, DO, Ph.D., of Boston

As computers outperform humans at complex cognitive tasks, disruptive innovation will increasingly remap the familiar with waves of creative destruction. And in health care, nowhere is this more apparent or imminent than at the crossroads of radiology and the emerging field of clinical data science. As leaders in our field, we must shepherd the innovations of cognitive computing by defining its role within diagnostic imaging, while first and foremost ensuring the continued safety of our patients.



If we are dismissive, defensive or self-involved, industry, payers and provider entities will innovate around us, achieving different forms of disruption, optimized to serve their own needs. To maintain our leadership position, as we enter the era of machine learning, it is essential that we serve our patients by directly managing the use of clinical data science toward the improvement of care - a position which will only strengthen our relevance in the care process as well as in future federal, commercial and accountable care discussions.

We will explore the state of clinical data science in medical imaging and its potential to improve the quality and relevance of radiology, as well as the lives of our patients.


Hope, hype and harm as medicine enters the digital age: Lessons from (and for) radiology
Sunday 8:30-10:15 a.m. Robert M. Wachter, M.D., of San Francisco

While radiology went digital nearly two decades ago, the wholesale switch from paper to computer in the rest of health care is a relatively recent phenomenon. While computerization has helped improve safety and quality, it has also had unanticipated consequences, many of them quite negative. Studies have shown, for example, that physician burnout has never been higher - and much of this is attributable to the electronic health record. Other studies have documented new types of medical errors, sometimes known as"eiatrogenesis." Dr. Robert Wachter spent a year studying the digitization of health care in researching his 2015 book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age. In this talk, he'll describe what we got right - and wrong - in our journey, and why radiology was, to a large degree, a canary in the digital coal mine.

November 2016 Magazine

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