From the January/February 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Expanding on his previous point, O’Connor spoke about the resultant impact VBP demand has had on innovation in the imaging product line. Currently, there is increased clinical accuracy, efficacy or patient flow in all of GE’s business units. Recent market surveys have shown GE a significant increase in the needs for operational efficiency and assistance of health networks in their strategic growth ambitions. The company has developed image-based and operational-based innovations. Operational improvements include: ensuring products are upgradeable – increasing the speed of implementation, reducing scan times with AI reconstruction (Air Recon DL, True Fidelity), reducing read times, errors and missed diagnoses with the Edison AI Orchestrator, reducing post processing times with improved advanced visualization and providing fast image acquisition to ensure productivity gains are achieved. Patient-centered improvements focus on: reducing patient absences and opening additional exam slots with Smart Scheduling – allowing more appointments and greater access to care, using encounter-based procedures to capture missed reimbursements and using unique product solutions like MR Air coils improve patient experience and comfort.

O’Connor further commented that, to deliver VBP contracts, there must be VBP digital capture of outcomes. Doing so would provide correct quantifications of achievable outcomes, thus ensuring that the value delivered meets expectations. GE has developed the tool, Imaging Insights, for this purpose. It gathers exam data from imaging machines and combines it with RIS data to deliver actionable intelligence; resulting in improved equipment utilization, patient dose exposure, schedule availability, referral patterns, and staff training.

Pivoting AI from trial to monetization, improving the patient experience

We also spoke with William Lacy, SVP Medical Informatics for Fujifilm. He told us that while Fujifilm is developing its own engines for analytics, most of the third party AI is still in trials. They have also been working to build bridges between third party vendors and buyers, integrating AI directly into PACS, organizing third party vendors, and presenting results to physicians within their workflow. The applications radiologists are requesting for AI are those that enable case prioritization. Many of these engines, according to Lacy, are in trial phases and not yet monetized. Vendors want radiologists to test them to identify their value and then gauge their willingness to pay. That activity is starting to ramp up, with engines getting into community hospitals. Here, many radiologists want to put screening programs together; Lacy says this is clearly an opportunity to deliver big value. Customers want to be able to, for instance, conduct a chest screening, a lung nodule detection; they want multiple applications of AI not discrete functionality.

January/February 2022 Magazine

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