GE Healthcare’s Sonia Sahney, on imaging OEMs’ future-ready responsibilities.

I’m happy to share the latest Imaging Wire Show featuring GE Healthcare’s CT and MI Chief Marketing Officer, Sonia Sahney. Join us for an excellent conversation exploring GE’s platform-based approach to solving imaging teams’ current and future scalability challenges.

Imaging Wire Sponsors

Arterys  •  Bayer Radiology  •  Blackford Analysis  •  Canon Medical Systems  •  CARPL.ai  •  Change Healthcare  •  Fujifilm Healthcare  •  GE Healthcare  •  Intelerad  •  Novarad  •  Nuance  •  Riverain Technologies  •  Siemens Healthineers  •  United Imaging  •  Us2.ai

Radiology Reporting

Radiology’s Smart New Deal

A new Journal of Digital Imaging editorial from UCLA radiology chair Dieter R. Enzmann, MD proposed a complete overhaul of how radiology reports are designed and distributed, in a way that should make sense to radiology outsiders but might make some folks within radiology uncomfortable.

Dr. Enzmann’s “Smart New Deal” proposes that radiology reports and reporting workflows should evolve to primarily support smartphone-based usage for both patients and physicians, ensuring that reports are:

• Widely accessible 
• Easily navigated and understood 
• Built with empathy for current realities (info overload, time scarcity, mobility)
• And widely utilized… because they are accessible, simple, and understandable

To achieve those goals, Dr. Enzmann proposes a “creative destruction” of our current reporting infrastructure, helped by ongoing improvements in foundational technologies (e.g. cloud, interoperability) and investments from radiology’s tech leaders (or from their future disruptors).

Despite Dr. Enzmann’s impressive credentials, the people of radiology might have a hard time coming to terms with this vision, given that:

• Radiology reports are mainly intended for referring physicians, and referrers don’t seem to be demanding simplified phone-native reports (yet)
• This is a big change given how reports are currently formatted and accessed
• Patient-friendly features that require new labor often face resistance
• It might make more sense for this smartphone-centric approach to cover patients’ entire healthcare journeys (not just radiology reports)

The Takeaway

It can be hard to envision a future when radiology reports are primarily built for smartphone consumption.

That said, few radiologists or rad vendors would argue against other data-based industries making sure their products (including their newsletters) are accessible, understandable, and actionable. Many might also recognize that some of the hottest imaging segments are already smartphone-native (e.g. AI care coordination solutions, PocketHealth’s imaging sharing, handheld POCUS), while some of the biggest trends in radiology focus on making reports easier for patients and referrers to consume.

Smartphone-first reporting might not be a sure thing, but the trends we’re seeing do suggest that efforts to achieve Dr. Enzmann’s core reporting goals will be rewarded no matter where technology takes us.

Automating Echo AI

Check out this Imaging Wire Show featuring Us2.ai’s co-founders, James Hare and Carolyn Lam MBBS, PhD, detailing Us2.ai’s unique origins, impressive capabilities, and big goals to automate echocardiography reporting across the world.

Made in Texas. Built for the Modern World.

See how United Imaging’s fresh approach, vertically integrated structure, and unique “all-in” strategy is raising the bar in medical imaging.

The Wire

• Contralateral Breast MRI Screening: A new Radiology Journal study suggests that performing contralateral breast MRI screening exams after initial breast cancer diagnosis improves overall survival. Analysis of 705 newly-diagnosed women (470 in MRI group), found that MRI screening detected cancers in 5.7% of the women’s other breast (vs. 2.1% in the no-MRI group) and was associated with higher overall survival (hazard ratio: 2.51) during a 10-year median follow up period. Contralateral breast MRI screening had the greatest benefit among patients with larger and grade III primary tumors (HR: 2.58 & 2.94).

• 3M Evaluating Health IT Exit: New reports suggest that 3M might sell its Health Information Systems business, and is in talks with a small group of interested parties. This report comes come just a few months after sources informed The Imaging Wire that Amazon was in talks to acquire 3M’s M*Modal medical dictation business. Although Amazon’s interest remains unconfirmed, the latest news suggests that 3M is indeed exploring options for its healthcare business.

• Automating AI Labeling: A team of University of Hong Kong engineers might have helped lower AI’s image labeling barrier, developing an automated system that could reduce human labeling labor by 90%. The team’s “REFERS” system is trained with datasets containing both labeled images and free-text radiology reports, and then applies its learned associations (text, images, labels) to automatically add labels to new images.

• Fujifilm Standardizing DoD PACS: FUJIFILM Healthcare Americas was awarded a US DoD contract to standardize Naval and Air Force medical facilities’ PACS technology. The deal will make Fujifilm Synapse the standard PACS across 14 facilities responsible for 650k annual radiology studies.

• The Case for Prior Authorization AI: A new McKinsey report highlighted prior authorization AI solutions’ potential to improve healthcare efficiency, noting healthcare’s significant PA labor burden (including in radiology) and estimating that AI tools could automate 50% to 75% of PA tasks. McKinsey is far from the only observer promoting AI’s potential to improve healthcare’s administrative efficiency, coming just a few weeks after an MIT Sloan Management Review editorial suggested that administrative healthcare AI will find greater short-term acceptance and provide more straightforward ROI than clinical AI.

• Avicenna.AI & Sectra: Avicenna.AI announced a global distribution agreement with Sectra, making its neurovascular AI tools (CINA-ICH, CINA-LVO, and CINA-ASPECTS) available through the Sectra Amplifier Marketplace. The alliance adds to Avicenna.AI’s impressive list of distribution partners (Blackford, Arterys, TeraRecon, Deepc, Nuance, Viz.ai, and more) and similarly expands Sectra’s neuro AI partner panel (also: Combinostics, Qure.ai, mediaire, Cercare, icometrix, Quantib).

• Carestream’s New Owners: Carestream Health announced a recapitalization agreement that will eliminate $220M in company debt, and make its top lenders into the X-ray manufacturer’s new primary owners. The transaction will help clean up Carestream’s books and could give it a much-needed fresh start, noting that its previous owner (Onex) seemed more focused on selling Carestream than growing it. Onex was reported unsuccessful in its three previous sales attempts (2021, 2017, and 2013) and sold Carestream’s informatics business to Philips in 2019. 

• Neuroimaging Growth & Disparities: A new JACR study analyzing 85k Medicare stroke episodes revealed significant increases in CTA, CTP, and MRI utilization between 2012 and 2019 (+250%, +428%, +18%), while MRA volumes declined (−33%). This growth might have widened stroke neuroimaging disparities, as the study found lower overall utilization among rural patients, and modality-specific disparities among older patients (CTA, MRI, MRA), female patients (CTA), and black patients (CTA & CTP).

• Affidea Acquired and Expanding: European imaging center giant Affidea Group (320 centers, 15 countries, 10M patients/year) has a new primary stakeholder after a €1B equity acquisition by Belgian investment company GBL. Affidea was already an aggressive acquirer (90 acquired centers in the last 3 years) and the company now plans to accelerate its expansion, both within its current markets and into new European geographies. 

• Oxipit & AstraZeneca’s Quality Partnership: Oxipit announced the results of an AstraZeneca-supported pilot study that used Oxipit’s ChestEye Quality AI software to analyze nearly 50k CXRs from two Lithuanian medical centers, detecting 190 clinically relevant pulmonary nodule findings including 82 that could have been missed. AstraZeneca, which uncoincidentally is a lung cancer treatment leader, has similar lung cancer detection alliances with Qure.ai and Aidence.

• Underdocumented LCS Discussions: A new UNC-led study published in JACR found that just 42% of lung cancer screening participants (n = 580) had their required shared decision-making conversations documented in the EHR, although 71% of the patients stated that these conversations did occur. EHR documentation was highest among patients with high body mass index, current smokers, and those referred by pulmonary clinicians, underscoring the fact that SDM documentation has plenty of room for improvement.

• SR’s MI and NC Expansion: Strategic Radiology continued to expand its consortium of independent radiology groups, welcoming Michigan’s Advanced Radiology Services (214 radiologists) and North Carolina’s Catawba Radiology Associates (18 radiologists). The partnerships expand SR’s presence in Michigan and North Carolina (now 2 & 6 practices), while increasing its membership to 32 practices and over 1,500 radiologists.

Change Healthcare’s Secure Cloud

Did you know one quarter of healthcare organizations have experienced a cyber-attack in the last year? This Change Healthcare animation explains how 3rd-party certified cloud-native enterprise imaging can help secure IT infrastructure that might be exposed with re-platformed imaging systems.

The Resource Wire

• Working out your AI business case? Check out this helpful Blackford Analysis report on how to calculate AI’s clinical, IT, administrative, and financial value to your organization.

• Having Trouble Improving Your Radiology Workflow? This Novarad report details how a customizable PACS, high uptime and reliability, and digital image enhancement tools can improve your workflow.

• This Riverain Technologies case study details how the University of Colorado Hospital enhanced its chest X-ray workflow with ClearRead Bone Suppress.

• Watch Einstein Healthcare’s Terry Matalon, MD, describe how combining Nuance PowerScribe One with the Nuance AI Marketplace’s workflow integrated AI improved their radiology reporting accuracy and confidence.

• To solve the challenges of enterprise imaging, you’ll need a strategy that addresses today’s needs and future challenges. Answer the questions to see if you’re prepared to formulate a more effective healthcare IT plan.

• When SyntheticMR validated its SyMRI MSK solution, they leveraged the CARPL platform to compare conventional knee and spine MRI image quality with SyntheticMR images. Check out their validation process and results here.

• With radiologist workloads growing in volume and complexity, having the wrong PACS can lead to radiologist burnout. This helpful Fujifilm post shows how having the right PACS that functions as a centralized and integrated enterprise imaging system can be part of the solution.

• Check out this talk from Eliot Siegel, MD on the “Hype, Myth, Reality and Next Steps” of imaging AI, including a profile on Canon’s AiCE Deep Learning Reconstruction solution at around the 4-minute mark.

• Are you sure your imaging archive is safe and recoverable? See how Intelerad’s Cloud DR disaster recovery solution mitigates the many risks facing your archive by securely storing copies of every image.

• Check out this patient case study showing how the Arterys Chest I MSK AI solution helped emergency physicians spot two rib fractures in a shoulder pain exam that might have gone unnoticed.

• Learn how Windsong Radiology Group used Bayer’s MEDRAD Stellant FLEX CT injection system to drive efficiencies and standardization across its imaging centers.

• See how GE Healthcare’s Revolution Maxima CT optimizes care by keeping technologists closer to the patient in this testimonial from RadNet’s Lawrence Tannenbaum, MD.