Adopting an AI Medical Imaging Platform Strategy

There’s good news for radiologists looking to improve their medical imaging workflows—new and robust clinical applications are out on the market. Most notably, tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology are changing the way radiologists provide clinical care by enhancing clinical decision-making, increasing productivity, and efficiency and improving patient outcomes.

The Value of AI-Driven Radiology Workflows

Traditional radiology workflows are typically tedious, requiring radiologists to perform manual, repetitive operator-dependent tasks such as reporting or visual scoring. When faced with large volumes of studies to read within a short period of time, radiologists are prone to making errors and experiencing burnout.

AI-driven radiology workflows provide relief from these burdens by:

• Increasing the scale at which radiologists can operate 
• Improving the overall accuracy of diagnostic decisions
• Detecting complex patterns or structures with reliability and reproducibility

So, how can you maximize return on investment (ROI) with a medical imaging platform strategy?

Adopting AI via a Medical Imaging Platform Strategy

While adopting new clinical applications, healthcare organizations typically face challenges scoping out the full benefits of these applications. 

In radiology, a long list of risk assessment requirements is necessary for decision-makers to validate the costs and benefits of acquiring a new medical imaging software application.

Product acquisition is often a slow, bureaucratic process that limits how many applications are adopted and utilized, even when they are high-performance applications that will provide significant ROI for a radiology practice.

A medical imaging platform strategy mitigates these risks by offering radiology practices the option to evaluate the value of medical imaging applications via a single technology framework. As such, radiology practices are well-positioned to comprehensively assess the financial and time costs and risks of acquiring a new imaging application.

Benefits of a Medical Imaging Platform Strategy

Besides streamlining the process of procuring new medical imaging applications, there are several benefits to adopting a medical imaging platform, which include:

• A simplified process for stakeholders to decide on, select, and procure applications from a list of options.
• Faster implementation of applications as users can add new applications with reduced risk for financial, operational, and technical constraints
• A streamlined flow of data from platform applications to clients’ clinical systems
• Correct routing of data and image transmission from applications to locations and vice versa
• Lesser reliance on in-house IT teams for support

Essentially, a medical imaging platform strategy transfers the complexities of acquiring a new application to a platform provider, allowing radiology practices to focus on providing a high standard of clinical care. 

The platform provider then manages the specific demands of the clinical application to ensure it performs effectively. When adopting a medical imaging platform strategy, you can expect your service provider to:

• Oversee security implementations and compliance requirements
• Troubleshoot technical issues within the application
• Manage the flow of data to the right locations
• Optimize interoperability between the platform and clinical infrastructure

Your job as a radiology practice is to identify clinical needs that the application can meet and then work with the imaging platform service provider to optimize the application.

Benefits of an AI Medical Imaging Platform Strategy for Stakeholders 

When it comes to the stakeholders of a radiology practice, a medical imaging platform strategy provides a range of benefits for radiologists, physicians, IT departments, and administrators.

For radiologists who may have concerns about the reliability of new applications, there are several benefits to adopting tools from a curated platform of AI based applications:

• Applications can be turned on or off, depending on radiologists’ preferences or needs
• Shorter purchase timelines since products have met testing and regulatory requirements and can be trusted
• Faster, on-demand access to applications without the need to commit up-front
• No hardware additions or tools that can further complicate radiology workflows

Adoption of AI medical imaging platforms enables physicians to:

• Gain actionable insights to make accurate clinical decisions
• Communicate more effectively with patients
• Provide more informed treatment and care options that translate into improved clinical outcomes
• Become more confident in the accuracy of diagnostic decisions
• Gain more efficient workflow and reporting

On the IT side, the initial platform deployment takes some heavy lifting. However, once complete, IT departments can benefit from:

• Minimal effort requirements to onboard AI applications 
• No hardware and software interfaces to manage in-house
• Lower staffing requirements as only one technical point of contact is needed in-house
• Increase security and mitigates compliance risk

For healthcare administrators looking to reduce clinical inefficiencies, there are several benefits to a medical imaging platform strategy:

• Cost savings in the short and long term
• Fewer tasks are involved in the procurement process
• Improved efficiency with a single platform supplier
• Flexibility when it comes to the types of purchase models available for platform imaging applications
• Get ROI faster from implementing intelligent applications and workflows

A medical imaging AI platform strategy provides invaluable benefits for the different stakeholders within and beyond radiology practice. The simplicity and effectiveness of a platform strategy will help improve productivity and clinical efficiency in your radiology practice.

Need More Information?

For a solid overview of how AI can help improve workflows, check out our white paper, How Radiologists Can Improve Accuracy And Scale Of Medical Diagnoses With Cloud and Artificial Intelligence. The paper will show you:

• Why cloud technology is gaining popularity with radiology practices
• What the key misconceptions about the technology in the clinical environment are 
• How AI Improves cloud technology for radiologists
• And much more!

Download to learn more.