From the October 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Health care will always need the human eye, but leveraging insights from this next digital revolution could help improve speed and accuracy of diagnosis, patient throughput and access in developing regions. In rural China, for example, there is only one doctor per 1,000 people. With access to these groundbreaking technologies, that clinician can harness the collective experience of the global radiology community to assist in his patient’s care.
As a modality, MR will benefit the most from the next digital revolution. MR procedures are growing 4 percent per year. But a single cardiac MR exam can generate up to 20 gigabytes of data, due to its inherent 4D dataset and layers of information. Thanks to cloud technology and access to clinical insights driven by deep learning, that cardiac exam, which used to take hours to post-process, now takes minutes and is virtually a smart-phone away.
Picture this: you’re on vacation in Brazil when you have a cardiac event. In a matter of minutes, a physician in Rio de Janeiro could collaborate with your cardiologist in Chicago to review your history and these clinical insights leading to a better care pathway.
As an industry, we need to plan for this future. Vendors, clinicians, health care systems, regulatory and standards bodies and IT will need to collaborate to ensure changes are implemented and adopted simply, seamlessly and “cyber-securely.” The result is going to be revolutionary. Clinicians with access to a health care cloud will leverage more informed insights into their clinical decision-making, empowering them to spend less time navigating data and more time caring for patients.
About the author: Eric Stahre is president and CEO of GE Healthcare MR.
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