From the November 2021 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

In addition to patient care, the completeness of reports and automation of reporting workflow, creates financial and operational benefits for providers, by reducing the risk of lost revenue through incomplete reports, as well as supporting efficiency in report generation. In context of the post-pandemic recovery from the economic impact of COVID-19, this is a substantial driver.

Longer-term benefits of structured reporting?
The completeness and the standardization of structured reports not only supports diagnosis and care today, but the outputs can be aggregated to build a pool of standardised and “clean” data that can drive better-informed care delivery in the future.
Aggregation of standardised data can also help health systems move one step closer to precision medicine. Greater personalisation of care, combining and analysing the patients' history and health record against a wealth of past patients’ data, can better support medical decisions and support development of targeted therapies. To truly enhance data for precision medicine, structured reporting will need to be adopted at substantial scale.

Alongside precision medicine, standardised and machine-readable data will also support the development of technologies such as AI, improving accuracy and improving the real-life application of detection, analysis, or triage tools in radiology.

Why is it difficult to adopt?
Despite the benefits of structured reporting, adoption in radiology across the U.S. and globally is limited.

Due to the free-form nature of radiology reporting, creating a framework of standardised terminology and processes is a complex task, with limited progress to date. There are many considerations needed ahead of creating a standardised framework, such as:

• Which terminology and process are best rolled out across a national or international framework?
• Who is in the best position to lead this initiative?
• Which stakeholders across the enterprise need to be involved to support defining the standards?
• How do you overcome the difference in regional or local care protocols and standards?

Some best-of-breed reporting vendors have released structured reporting tools that are being utilised in the U.S. and pockets of Western Europe. However, more widespread use will be restricted to leading imaging IT and PACS software vendor resources, due to the configuration required to map each provider’s individual processes and implement the structured reporting solution in the incumbent imaging IT platform.

November 2021 Magazine

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