With the annual Radiological Society of North America meeting just weeks away, HealthCare Business News checked in with RSNA president, Dr. Umar Mahmood, to find out more about what attendees can expect from this year’s meeting.

We also talk about Mahmood’s background in healthcare and what drew him to radiology, and a leadership role with the RSNA.

HCB News: Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in radiology?
Dr. Umar Mahmood: Choosing radiology was the best career decision I’ve ever made. I didn’t have a single “aha!” moment that led me to it, but I’ve always been deeply interested in science and driven by a desire to help people. While much of medical school focuses on other specialties, radiology and imaging are interwoven throughout nearly all of medicine. Many colleagues have shared their own realization that imaging so often guides the path forward in diagnosis and treatment, regardless of disease. For me, it was my Ph.D. thesis advisor who first suggested radiology while I was in medical school. Since then, my appreciation for the profound ability of imaging to guide the best possible outcomes for patients has only deepened with every passing year.

HCB News: As a leader of the society, what have been some of your top initiatives or priorities?
UM: It’s been my honor to further RSNA’s mission of advancing radiology research, innovation and technology to improve patient care. Because of my research interests, one of my top priorities is precision medicine. Radiology is central to all aspects of patient care because it most effectively informs diagnosis and provides guidance to the best care for our patients. Through the framework of precision medicine, therapies are increasingly optimized for each individual patient. Radiology has always been quick to embrace new approaches and technologies, and RSNA is a leader in supporting the research and education that allow us to advance and to integrate these new approaches into clinical practice.

Over the past year, we have significantly enhanced our education platform, EdCentral, and introduced RSNA Ventures, a mission-aligned subsidiary created to drive innovation in radiology and imaging technologies.

HCB News: Has radiology's relationship with AI changed since the last RSNA meeting?
UM: Radiology’s relationship with AI has only grown stronger. Every day, more and more radiologists are using AI to expedite workflows, improve diagnosis and optimize patient management and outcomes. Through AI, we can harness an immense amount of data about a patient’s condition. With a cancer patient, for instance, we can use AI to aggregate everything we know about cancer biology, about targeted cancer drugs, and about a patient’s clinical history, including all the patient’s imaging and electronic medical record data and the genetic sequencing of their tumor. We can then use that rich data to to guide our interpretation of imaging scans and thereby help in the creation of a detailed and personalized treatment plan for that patient.

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