From the January/February 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

By Shane Walker

This year’s RSNA conference kicked off with a plenary lecture from Dr. James Brink, chair of radiology and chief of Enterprise Radiology at Mass General Brigham. In his talk, Dr. Brink discussed the importance of radiologists engaging with and defining their role in value-based health care. If not, other specialties and organizations will take the lead and set their own initiatives. Picking up on this theme, one of our focus points was exploring the impact that striving to achieve increased value was having on hardware and software imaging procurement, including AI. The other focus point was identifying the innovation occurring in attempts to keep pace with the demands of the radiology department. As is true with most discussions regarding value-based procurement (VBP), it remains an emerging area that is still not well defined and is difficult to measure and identify. That said, there was much evidence of suppliers preparing their solutions to address the VBP concept as it continues to evolve. In this editorial they include GE Healthcare, Fujifilm, Agfa, Philips, Konica Minolta, and Shimadzu.

Increasing productivity and decreasing burnout with AI in the workflow

Speaking with Scott Miller, CMO of Global Imaging at GE Healthcare, we discussed the benefits of AI within radiology. He summarized, “our AI is intended to be an enabler to improve the patient experience, staff experience, and clinical outcomes”. For Miller, AI will allow technology to deliver a variety of outcomes and be a less expensive, faster means of upgrading technology as it advances. He discussed the need for AI, saying that today’s radiologists are facing heavy strains. As such, Miller poses that AI can assist in their workload by eliminating mundane tasks. For instance, it can prioritize findings, highlighting those that need attention quickly and conduct free reads. In doing so, it can change worklists so that critical findings are attended to first. A few related products include the SIGNA Hero MRI system with AIR Recon DL enhancements to reduce exam times; the AMX Navigate portable X-ray with ‘zero click exam’ workflow; and the Critical Care Suite 2.0 collection of AI algorithms for case prioritization, automated measurements, and quality control. As with years past, GE is still providing much of its AI embedded on device. Another product to note is the Allia Platform for interventional OR that uses GE’s Edison AI platform and Liver ASSIST Virtual Parenchyma. This platform provides 3D visualization to simulate injections dynamically. Productivity gains are also being found in cloud PACS, where the application of AI for load balancing is increasing productivity by 20%.

January/February 2022 Magazine

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