The world of healthcare IT is ever-evolving. It seems as though every day there is a new piece of technology to talk about or an exciting update/new approach to old technology. Staying on top of all of this news for every piece of technology or area in healthcare can very quickly become overwhelming. This in turn almost always results in a development, new release, or even an entire area of healthcare left behind and forgotten. So today we are going to take a little pause to focus in on technology for radiology and cardiology. To get some insights on what is actively being done in these two fields of healthcare IT, we reached out to our amazing Healthcare IT Today Community. The following are their insights into radiology and cardiology technology.
Sean Brady, Co-Founder and CEO at Ventric Health
Given that 75% of patients with low socioeconomic status are first diagnosed with heart failure in the ER or in-patient setting, it is critical that advancements in chronic disease management prioritize increasing access to care. We must utilize advanced technology to allow for noninvasive diagnosis in diverse settings, including outpatient clinics and home healthcare environments.
Evan Ruff, Co-Founder and CEO at OXOS Medical
Digital imaging is at an inflection point. New patient experience expectations, coupled with a looming labor shortage in radiology, is forcing new (and in many cases, overdue) innovation in imaging diagnostics. In 2024, I expect innovation to accelerate in a few key areas:
AI empowerment: AI will be transformative for radiology, but we’re still years away from widespread use of AI-trained diagnostics algorithms or many other purely clinical applications. It has immediate applicability, however, in changing the ways in which imaging tests are administered. AI can be used to calibrate devices, for example, or fine-tune the amount of radiation emitted to reduce it to an amount that’s as low as reasonably achievable. AI-enabled viewfinders, meanwhile, can be used to ensure that devices and extremities are positioned correctly, dramatically cutting down the need for reshoot. Additionally, detector physics data can be leveraged to reduce visual noise in imaging without having to dial up radiation.
Portability: Lead-lined X-ray suites and immobile traditional c-arm devices, though ubiquitous in hospitals, no longer effectively serve the needs of modern healthcare. With a focus on efficacy in the last mile of care, as well as care equity and access, doctors and radiologists are increasingly seeking out imaging solutions that are portable. Devices with portable form factors not only enable new use cases—NFL sidelines, battlefields, mission trips, and more—they make imaging in a traditional setting easier and less capital-intensive. Portable imaging also opens up new opportunities for expanded care and services in settings like skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes.
Modularity: Single-purpose devices will fall out of favor, yielding to imaging devices that are flexible and modular. A doctor may want an imaging device that’s mounted on a traditional c-arm configuration, for example. A hospital can certainly purchase that—but they’ll be better served with a device that can be mounted to a c-arm, taken off and used on its own, attached to a table, or used in conjunction with attachments for extremity imaging.
Doctors, radiologists, and hospitals, especially those focused on pivoting to value-based care, are laser-focused on improving the last mile of care delivery. But to do that, they need to fundamentally examine the devices they use to deliver that care. The integration of AI, the move towards portability, and the shift to modularity in imaging devices are not just trends; they are the harbingers of a paradigm shift in how we approach medical imaging. Every innovation, every step towards flexibility and efficiency, brings us closer to delivering exceptional care.
Braj Thakur, Senior Director, Portfolio Strategy at Ricoh North America
How is telemedicine impacting the field of cardiology and radiology, and what are the key considerations for ensuring the quality and security of remote diagnostic services?
Impacts:
- Accessibility and affordability are two major impacts. With an alarming number of rural hospital closures, having access to expertise of these two key specialties is becoming more critical for underserved communities. Most of the small, rural, and underserved communities cannot afford the significant investment in equipment, staffing, and training. Telemedicine helps to fill this gap.
- Scale is another key outcome. Through an increasing number of affordable, wearable devices with simpler mobile application interfaces and remote monitoring capabilities, it is easier to serve a larger population with existing staff and focus on early detection of complications which could lead to better outcomes for patients.
- Risk reduction is another key piece. This is driven by higher adherence to follow-up and care plans based on ongoing engagement and proactive intervention made possible by remote patient monitoring.
- Improved patient satisfaction scores and outcomes are the resulting byproducts.
Key considerations: Beyond following the industry best practices around care management, cyber security, and patient privacy, health systems must consider a few areas which are often overlooked.
- Logistics partner – It may be hard for health systems to have in-house resources to scale beyond initial patient trials and roll out to a few hundred patients. An upfront analysis of internal capabilities to handle the logistics, followed by an early selection and engagement of experienced logistics partners who are able to add the necessary expertise and resources can help to avoid the most common and frequent challenges to scale remote diagnostic services. This means going from a few hundred patients in a limited geographic area to thousands of patients over a larger geographic area.
- Proactive, ongoing patient engagement- For the long-term financial viability of the program, it is important to engage the qualified patient population and convince them to enroll in the program. Once a patient is enrolled, a well thought, proactive, ongoing patient engagement program with the capability to use the patient’s preferred medium (voice call, text, email, printed material, USPS Mail, video link, etc.) with the objective to drive continuous use of the services and care plan adherence is an important factor to success.
What remote monitoring devices in cardiology are most impacting healthcare and where is this technology headed? In terms of immediate impact, cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) with Bluetooth connectivity and effective mobile applications to show the collected data in an easy-to-understand manner offer a sizable impact. Better patient experience design and ease of use through mobile applications would improve patient satisfaction scores and result in improved patient compliance and reduced patient attrition. This would be especially true for Baby Boomers who are becoming a greater percentage of the patient population. Long term, wearable devices such as smartwatches will incorporate more functionality, and in combination with an easy-to-use mobile application on a smartphone would lower the cost and increase the percentage of the population that can benefit from cardiac remote monitoring.
Going forward, we should expect to see a strong emphasis on cybersecurity, encryption, and proper safeguards around patient privacy. Tighter integration with Electronic Health Records and patient experience would be two other areas where we will see more investments. With advancements in ML and AI, we can expect to see more personalized remote monitoring, notifications, treatments, and intervention approaches. Don’t be surprised if the industry moves from a structured follow-up based on regular intermittent appointments to more agile, patient-specific asynchronous care with a heavy emphasis on proactive interventions.
Robert Wesley, Senior Manager, Biomedical Engineer, Additive Manufacturing at Ricoh USA
How has the advancement of digital imaging technology improved the accuracy and efficiency of diagnostic procedures in radiology and cardiology? A 3D-printed model will only ever be as accurate as the imaging on which it is based. Through the advances in digital imaging technology, more detailed DICOM studies will translate to a more detailed anatomic model which can help with pre-surgical planning and clinical team collaboration. With cardiology especially, having more accurate imaging will allow for a more accurate model which will be useful for patient care activities such as sizing devices to anatomy prior to a procedure.
Where are we at with artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in automating image analysis and enhancing diagnostic capabilities in cardiology and radiology? As more training data is fed through artificial intelligence across a broad spectrum of patient populations, such as age, pathology, and ethnicity, precision medical device design will become more scalable through advancements in AI and other technologies, like 3D printing and additive manufacturing. By employing biomimetic principles and AI algorithms, patient-specific medical devices will be able to be created through automated mass customization, allowing for faster delivery of personalized care. Segmentation, turning DICOM files into 3D printable files, is a bottleneck in all personalized devices.
Current state AI faces the challenge of adapting to DICOM studies containing pediatric and congenital data, which make up a significant percentage of cases in which 3D printed patient-specific devices are cited for use. As AI becomes more accurate, there will be less need for human interaction in this step in the process. AI will act as a co-pilot to help along the way with human interaction to verify the outcome, but overall assistance from AI should be able to substantially shorten the time for this step in the process. Long term, we see AI solutions as being able to help address disparities in healthcare to ensure that everyone has better access to technological enhancements.
Ron Wince, Founder and CEO at Myndshft Technologies
As radiology and cardiology surge forward with groundbreaking innovations, administrative processes need to keep pace. Prior authorizations, while essential for clinical oversight and fiscal responsibility, must not hinder timely care delivery. The fact is that radiology and cardiology practices face a slew of prior authorization requirements—from diagnostic CT scans to nuclear cardiology. More critically, prior authorizations have an outsized impact on marginalized communities be they racial minorities, rural residents, or those facing economic hardships.
The Association of Black Cardiologists notes that 42% of their members report challenges getting access to new pharmacologic therapies for patients. Moreover, 75% say formulary restrictions create disparities in care, and 53% say it leads to patient confusion, and in turn, contributes to reduced adherence and increased discontinuation of medications. Patients should never experience compromised care due to bureaucratic delays. A unified prior authorization platform for both medical and pharmacy benefits actively paves the way toward improved access and greater health equity. By tackling providers’ foremost challenges head-on with technology, we steadfastly place patient care at the forefront of our mission.
Hayley Dezendorf, Vice President, Teleradiology at Experity
Telemedicine has expanded the capabilities of radiology by enabling an extension of existing care facilities. With teleradiology, providers can save time, scan results are delivered faster, and patient satisfaction increases with expedited care processes. Teleradiology scan readings and diagnoses are equivalent to those of in-house radiology services, but for smaller facilities or those looking to outsource, teleradiology allows them to reallocate funding to best serve the business.
Mark Dobbs, Global Healthcare Alliances, Enterprise Imaging at Pure Storage
AI can lead to faster and more accurate diagnoses, significant advancements in research and clinical trials, and improved patient outcomes. With so much focus on the many AI applications in the radiology and Enterprise Imaging space, the data platforms must support both clinical users and AI solutions at the same time. As patients live longer, and image count and resolution increase, the vast amount of data to manage is staggering. Couple that with high latency and delayed processing, and it’s hard to consider embracing AI if your human physicians are already impacted by poor data performance. Data slowness, complexity, and scale hinder healthcare organizations from implementing these important technologies. But, with the strong foundation of a reliable and secure storage platform that enables speed and scalability, AI can propel the industry forward without having to compromise performance speed.
Tim O’Connell, M.D., Founder and CEO, practicing radiologist at emtelligent
Industry and academia are making tremendous strides in AI acting as a ‘second read’ for image analysis to enhance diagnostic capabilities in imaging-based specialties. Part of this is being driven by significant advances in natural language processing (NLP). These advancements in NLP coming from transformer-based models and large language models (LLMs) promise to provide high-quality ‘ground truth’ from the source radiology reports for training image analysis models at scale. What we need to do now is use these new NLP models on larger and more diverse datasets to ensure our image analysis models can work well across representative patient populations to avoid past problems with bias and inequity. We must ensure our AI models reflect the diversity of our patient populations to ensure that nobody is left behind.
So many great insights here! Thank you to everyone who took the time out of their day to submit a quote in to us and to all of you for taking the time to read this article! We could not do this without all of your support! What are your thoughts on radiology and cardiology technology? Let us know either in the comments down below or over on social media. We’d love to hear from all of you!
