“Increasingly, the future of health care will be outside the four walls of the hospital.”
The Permanente Federation’s Stephen Parodi, MD, explaining Kaiser Permanente and Mayo Clinic’s big move into at-home healthcare.
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The Imaging Wire
Taking Healthcare Home
Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente just announced a $100m strategic investment in technology-enabled home care company, Medically Home, calling it a key step in their mission to deliver more care within patient homes.
- About Medically Home – Medically Home provides a combination of virtual and in-person care (including imaging) and works directly with health systems to treat patients across the U.S.
- Moving Home – At-home care continues to gain momentum, helped by macro healthcare shifts (tech, regulatory, cultural, pandemics), efforts from homecare startups like Medically Home and Dispatch Health, and mounting evidence that at-home care is good for both patients and hospitals.
- Mayo & Kaiser’s Vision – After using Medically Home’s model for some time, Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente just made it very clear that they foresee a big shift towards home healthcare — and they also have the size/influence to help make that prediction come true.
- Imaging Impact – If this homeward care shift happens the way Mayo and Kaiser envision, it could have a major imaging impact, leading to more at-home scans (using home-sized scanners), more near-home imaging (mobile, local, etc.), and more virtual referrals and consultations. It could also mean less in-hospital imaging.
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AI Trolling Aftermath
Our coverage of a disgruntled RapidAI user’s Twitter post last Thursday certainly struck a nerve, breaking the Imaging Wire’s reader response records, while preceding some big changes with the post (it was deleted by mid-day) and apparently with the implementation (it’s now working). Here’s an update:
- The Background – A Florida practice’s Informatics & AI Director tweeted out some harsh criticism for RapidAI after the first week using the stroke AI tool, generating quite a bit of attention (40 retweets, 121 likes). Even if this might have been AI’s “Cinnamon Toast Crunch shrimp tails moment,” the thread actually produced some constructive discussions between actual clinicians (most AI Twitter threads are full of people who make or sell AI). It was also deleted from Twitter by Thursday afternoon.
- The Backlash – Many initial reader comments were relatively understanding (AI takes more than a week to ramp up, open communication is a good thing), but the tone changed after the thread was erased from Twitter. Comments quickly shifted to theorizing why this post was removed and complaints of how after years of “suffering with tech in silence” (PACS, dictation, etc.) radiologists have been silenced again.
- RapidAI on The Record – RapidAI’s marketing SVP, Diane Merrick, also reached out, clarifying that RapidAI understands radiologists’ technology frustrations and is open to both direct and public dialog. She also shared that Lee Memorial Medical System (where this implementation took place) didn’t have any issues this week and RapidAI “is already saving time and helping them do their jobs better.”
- The Takeaway – There can be a lot of lessons from this story. Some might view this as a sign of AI’s growing pains. Some might see it as a reminder that clinicians and AI vendors should be prepared for early hiccups. Some might see this as a reminder that the industry needs to keep dialing-in their AI implementation processes. And they’d all probably be right.
Zebra’s Early Warning System
Learn how Zebra-Med’s AI Coronary Calcium solution can provide an ‘early-warning’ system for patients with coronary artery disease using existing CT scans.
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The Wire
- RapidAI Evidence: A new Neuroradiology Journal study showed that RapidAI’s stroke solutions can deliver results, especially if you give it more than a week. The study (n = 310 w/ stroke symptoms, 161 w/ LVO) found that Rapid CTA detected large vessel occlusion with 80% sensitivity and a 95% positive predictive value, while significantly reducing CTA-to-groin puncture times (93 min vs 68 min).
- Visage in Vermont: Visage Imaging added the University of Vermont Health Network to its list of Visage 7 enterprise imaging clients, announcing an 8yr/$14M contract that will replace several PACS (notably: McKesson, Hologic). UVM will deploy Visage 7 in the public cloud, making it Visage’s third straight client to transition to the cloud (following Intermountain and MedStar).
- Injectable Ultrasound: Columbia University engineers developed a “tiny, wireless, injectable” ultrasound chip that can monitor medical conditions and even perform treatments. The microscopic device heavily relies on ultrasound technology, leveraging ultrasound as its internal energy source and external communication method, in addition to using it for clinical monitoring (in this case temperature) and therapies (in this case neurostimulation).
- AIR Recon DL’s 7.0T FDA: GE Healthcare’s AIR Recon DL now has FDA 510(k) approval for use with its flagship SIGNA 7.0T scanner, expanding the image reconstruction technology across GE’s entire MRI portfolio. AIR Recon DL launched with support for GE’s 1.5T and 3.0T MRIs this time last year.
- Dartmouth Hangs Up its Aprons: New Hampshire’s Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center became the latest hospital system to stop using X-ray aprons, in response to growing evidence of aprons’ ineffectiveness (worse images, more radiation exposure) and clear efficiency drawbacks (cleaning, storage).
- Cardiac MRI Challenger: Manganese‐enhanced MRI (MEMRI) might be superior to gadolinium-based exams for assessing myocardial viability during the hours after a heart attack. That’s from a new study that found MEMRI was able to quantify myocardial viability in mice earlier than late‐gadolinium‐enhanced MRI, suggesting that manganese-based MRI agents could have a future for cardiac treatment planning and monitoring.
- Butterfly’s Q1: Butterfly Network just released its Q1 2021 financials, revealing improved revenue ($12.4m vs. $8.7m), gross margins (+$6.4m vs. -$0.8m), and net margins (-$0.7m vs. -$24.4m). Butterfly’s financials are headed in the right direction, although these still-small numbers are also a reminder of how much of its sizable market cap and POCUS mindshare is based on its future potential.
- United Imaging’s Next-Gen MRs: United Imaging announced its new Asia-Pacific MRI lineup at China’s CMEF exhibition. The launch was headlined the new uMR Jupiter (1st whole-body 5.0T), uMR 9.4T (9.4T preclinical MR, with PET insert), and uMR Omega (1st ultra-wide bore 3.0T), and also included the uMR 890 (3.0T) and uMR 680 (wide-bore 1.5T).
- Hologic’s Health Equality Project: Hologic announced its Project Health Equality (PHE) initiative, aimed at addressing the barriers that have prevented Black and Hispanic women from receiving equitable screening and healthcare. Through PHE, Hologic will invest more than $20m towards screening equity-related research, education, and access.
- COVID Outcomes AI: NYU researchers developed an AI tool that analyzes chest X-rays to predict COVID patients’ severity risk. The researchers trained the algorithm using a range of data from 2,943 seriously ill patients (CXRs, clinical, demographics, outcomes) and tested it against CXRs from 718 other patients. The algorithm correctly identified 80% of the patients who required intensive care, mechanical ventilation, and/or died within four days of admission (outperforming rads: 0.808 vs. 0.741 AUCs).
- Carestream’s X-Ray Noise Cancellation: Carestream announced its FDA-approved Smart Noise Cancellation (SNC) technology. Offered as an option for Carestream’s ImageView image-processing software, SNC allows users to adjust noise cancellation and exposure to meet their desired X-ray image quality.
Advancing CMR with DLIR
See how deep learning image reconstruction technology is advancing how radiologists and cardiologists use cardiac MRI in this GE Healthcare report.
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The Resource Wire
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- This Riverain Technologies case study details how Duke University Medical Center integrated ClearRead CT into its chest CT workflows, reducing read times by 26% and improving nodule detection by 29%.
- This presentation from Dr. Brian Goldner, MD details UC Davis Sacrimento’s experience with Canon’s Ultra High Resolution CT and how it can be applied to cardiothoracic interpretations.
- Check out this blog from the NIH’s Dr. Francis Collins, where he discusses how United Imaging’s “groundbreaking” Explorer total-body PET/CT “opens a new window into human biology.”
- See how UCSD reduced its lung nodule detection times and increased its reader performance using Arterys Lung AI.
- This new ebook looks at how you can empower your CT technologist team and set up your department for success by looking at four key areas.
- Workflow improvement, remote access, high image quality, and some major time savings. These are just a few of the benefits that cardiologists and their teams experienced with Hitachi Healthcare’s VidiStar platform.
- Learn how Salem Regional Medical Center improved its radiology workflows and cut service and syringe costs after adopting Bayer’s MEDRAD Stellant FLEX system.
- Not sure how to navigate the upcoming surprise billing laws? This Healthcare Administrative Partners post details how the No Surprises Act might affect your practice and what processes will be required to handle these changes.
- Check out how Novarad’s enterprise imaging patient storyboard view gives specialists more and better information from across a hospital system to better care for their patients.
