Hackensack Radiology Group’s Gregory Nicola, MD, on why radiologists might be ready for Sirona Medical’s unified RadOS Workspace.

Given all of the RSNA-timed announcements, this week’s issues will be more focused on the business and technology side of imaging. We’ll go back to normal next week.

Imaging Wire Sponsors

Arterys  •  Bayer Radiology  •  Blackford Analysis  •  Canon Medical Systems  •  Fujifilm Healthcare  •  GE Healthcare  •  Nanox.AI  •  Novarad  •  Nuance  •  Riverain Technologies  •  Siemens Healthineers  •  United Imaging

Informatics

Visage Adds Videos

Visage Imaging now allows radiologists to create and distribute video reports from the Visage 7 platform, representing an interesting milestone for radiology patient engagement and multimedia reporting.

About Visage Videos – The latest Visage 7 version (7.1.17) allows radiologists to quickly create and edit one minute multimedia video reports (video, audio, 2D/3D manipulations) at their workstations (same setup & dictation system), and use these videos to explain key findings to patients. Visage developed its new Video Reports feature with NYU Langone Health, which already had over 70 rads create more than 1k video reports, and found it to be valuable for both patients and referring physicians.

Patient Readiness – We’ve covered plenty of studies detailing how patients want to review their radiology reports, but struggle to understand them. We’ve also seen video communication and patient portals gain increasingly prominent roles in patient care. Based on those factors, Visage’s new Video Reports seem to have a solid product-market fit… if only patients were the decision makers.

Radiologist Adjustments – Visage’s Video Reports will expand radiologists’ reporting audience to patients for the first time, which would require mindset changes (simple language, referrer etiquette) and add workflow steps (rads would have to create two reports). These adjustments might initially make video reports a better fit for the most patient-centric radiology teams, but that could change over time. Plus, the Video Reports tool comes standard with Visage 7, so it will be available if/when the other groups change their mind.

The Video Trend – Given the telehealth and patient engagement revolutions taking place, it’s a solid bet that all types of clinicians will be expected to increase their digital / virtual patient interactions in the future. For radiologists, this might come in the form of Visage-style recorded videos or real-time primary care teleconsultations like MGH piloted earlier this year, but more patient-centric communications are coming.

The Takeaway – Visage’s new Video Reporting feature might be a small part of the overall Visage 7 platform, and its initial adoption might also be relatively small given most rad groups’ focus on productivity. However, this “small” video feature could prove to be part of a very big change in how radiologists engage with their patients.

Riverain’s Lung Cancer Guideline Kit

The USPSTF lung cancer screening guidelines were updated in May 2021, and driving compliance to these guidelines is a long, slow, repetitive process. Because of that, the Riverain team put together this kit to help hospitals and imaging centers educate their referring physicians or patients on the new guidelines.

COPC Ditches the Disk with Novarad

See how Novarad’s CryptoChart solution allowed Central Ohio Primary Care (COPC, 70 practices, 400 physicians) to make the transition to digital imaging sharing in this Healthcare IT News case study.

The Wire

• Sirona Launches RadOS: Sirona Medical officially launched its RadOS Workspace, which unifies core radiology IT components within a single cloud-native platform (worklist, viewer, reporter, AI), in order to simplify radiologist workflows and streamline AI adoption. Sirona emerged this summer with the ambitious goal of disrupting the radiology IT establishment. That level of disruption doesn’t come easy, but Sirona is now armed with an active product, a solid message, some influential board members/advisors, and $60m in funding to help make it happen. 

• Radiology’s Computer Vision Problem: A new study out of Saudi Arabia (n = 416) revealed high rates of computer vision syndrome (CVS) among the country’s radiologists. The survey revealed that 65% of rads suffer from CVS (31% moderate or severe), with higher rates among female radiologists and rads who wear glasses. The surveyed radiologists spent an average of 34 hours in front of their PACS monitor each week, plus 28 hours using other devices (e.g. smartphones, PCs, tablets) and another 7 hours watching TV.

• Philips’ Angio Spectral CT: Philips’ RSNA booth included the world’s first spectral angio-CT system, bringing the company’s spectral CT tech into the interventional suite. The new system combines Philips’ Spectral CT 7500 system (for spectral imaging) and the company’s Azurion with FlexArm Image-Guided Therapy System (for real-time fluoroscopy), allowing interventionalists to perform procedures requiring CT and/or angio guidance in one room.

• Hybrid PET/MR’s Epilepsy Advantage: A new study in Epilepsy Research suggests that hybrid PET/MR may improve epileptogenic lesion detection and could lead to more accurate presurgical work-ups and better surgical outcomes. The researchers compared 18F-FDG PET/MR images with co-registered PET and MR images (PET+MR) from 25 patients with focal drug-resistant epilepsy. Interpretations from two blinded physicians showed that the PET/MR exams had 13% higher sensitivity, detected six additional structural lesions, and led to “substantial” surgical decision-making changes with 10 of the patients. 

• Konica Minolta’s New Mobile X-Ray: Konica Minolta launched its new mKDR Xpress Mobile X-ray System and its compatible AeroDR Carbon Flat Panel Detector, highlighting the mKDR Xpress’ portability and ease of use and the AeroDR Carbon’s combination of image quality and durability.

• Radiologist Malpractice: A new Medscape survey (n = ~4,300) revealed that 64% of U.S. radiologists have been named in a malpractice lawsuit, making it the 9th most-sued specialty, but well behind plastic and general surgeons (both 83%). Malpractice cases were most commonly due to alleged missed or delayed diagnoses (31%), treatment complications (29%), and unfavorable outcomes (26%)

• LifeVoxel.AI’s Seed Round: Diagnostic visualization startup LifeVoxel.AI completed a $5m seed round that it will use to fund the development and commercialization of its Prescient platform. The 510k-approved cloud platform allows instant access to imaging studies (reports, annotations, data) from any web-based device, supporting both physician diagnostics and remote patient engagement. LifeVoxel.AI also plans to develop diagnostic AI tools that it will make available through the Prescient platform.

• GE & Optellum’s Lung Nodule AI Alliance: GE Healthcare and Optellum announced a new alliance that will integrate Optellum’s Virtual Nodule Clinic (AI-based malignancy assessments) with other AI solutions on GE Healthcare’s Edison platform, bring results from Optellum’s Lung Cancer Prediction AI into existing GE Healthcare workflows, and lead to sales/distribution collaborations between the two companies.

• Flawed Research & Flawed Policies: An editorial in the Journal of Medical Screening warned that thousands of Canadian women may have died of breast cancer because a pair of flawed 1980s trials influenced the country’s policy to begin screening at 50 years old. The paper suggests that the trials’ pre-screening step led to more women with signs of breast cancer being placed into mammography screening trial groups, which influenced the studies’ conclusions that screening doesn’t benefit 40-49yr old women.

• Lunit’s Pre-IPO Funding: Lunit raised another $61m, increasing its fundraising total to $135m just a few months before its IPO on the South Korean stock market. Like Lunit’s July 2021 investment from Guardant Health, the company emphasized how its latest investors’ healthcare/life science influence and experience will help establish Lunit’s role in cancer detection and treatment. 

• IBM’s New Orchestrators: IBM Watson Health announced its new Imaging AI Orchestrator and Imaging Workflow Orchestrator with Watson solutions at RSNA 2021. Imaging AI Orchestrator is a cloud-based AI service that provides access to a number of partner AI apps within radiology reading workflows, adding IBM to the growing list of PACS providers to integrate 3rd party AI apps. The new Imaging Workflow Orchestrator with Watson solution consolidates studies, patient data, and AI results into a single interface to improve reading and imaging IT efficiency. 

• Philips Integrates MedChat: Philips integrated MedChat into its Patient Navigation Manager platform, adding MedChat’s live chat and chatbot services to the platform’s existing communication methods (SMS, email, voice). Philips’ recent launch activity reveals a growing focus on helping providers improve their patient engagement workflows, including Philips’ openDoctor integration earlier this year (patient self-scheduling for imaging appointments).

• Einstein & Within Health Follow-Up: After a successful pilot, Einstein Healthcare announced that it will use Within Health’s follow-up management platform across its entire radiology patient population (400k exams annually). Within Health automates the identification, tracking, and engagement of patients who are at-risk of delayed or missed follow-ups.

HUMC’s Case for Siemens Healthineers TrueV

When the demand for your PET/CT imaging services outpaces available appointments, what are your options? Learn how Hackensack University Medical Center optimized its clinical operations by upgrading its Biograph Horizon to TrueV technology in this new case study from Siemens Healthineers.

The Resource Wire

• See Birmingham Radiological Group-GV radiologist, Joel Mixon, MD, describe their transition to Nuance PowerScribe One and how the platform improved their efficiency, consistency, and accuracy.

• Check out this Blackford Analysis video detailing how its AI platform streamlines AI adoption and workflows, allowing radiology teams to achieve AI’s clinical benefits without operational sacrifices.

• This prospective study out of Centre Hospitalier de Valenciennes in France revealed that Arterys’ MSK AI module improved junior and senior radiologists’ fracture interpretations and suggested that the tool might be particularly useful for ED physicians that handle frontline X-ray reads. 

• See how Canon AiCE DLR is achieving new levels of cardiovascular imaging in this presentation from Jeannie Yu MD, FACC, FSCCT.

• United Imaging and its CEO, Jeffrey M. Bundy, are changing how medical imaging technology is sold. With more than 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Jeffrey M. Bundy is working towards equal healthcare access for all via advanced medical imaging and radiotherapy equipment. Read how United Imaging is changing the game.

• This Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology article details the unique advantages of cloud-based CVIS systems (off-property access, team collaboration), with insights from one Mississippi-based cardiologist on the benefits of Fujifilm Healthcare’s VidiStar CVIS.

• See how and why Nanox.AI sees a much bigger future for public health AI than many of us imagine in this Imaging Wire Q&A with Zohar Elhanani.

• The need for faster radiology report turnaround is increasingly clear, but the ways to improve turnaround time aren’t always. See how smarter prioritization, streamlined communication, and true integration are driving faster turnarounds in this new GE Healthcare report.

• This Bayer case study details how radiation benchmarking programs can help push CT dose exposure reduction initiatives from achieving compliance to driving quality.