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If you’ve had an imaging study at a Lehigh Valley Health Network hospital in the past few months, chances are an artificial intelligence program is helping radiologists check for serious conditions.
Last year, LVHN began implementing a series of artificial intelligence tools for radiology departments in all 13 network hospitals. These tools are changing the way radiologists work, said Dr. Devang M. Gor, chairman of the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Medical Imaging at LVHN.
“I’m a power user of this technology. I use it every day and help others in my department adopt it and continue to use it,” Gore said.
Artificial Intelligence has become a concern for many due to viral news reports and social media discussions surrounding AI-generated speech technology or AI-generated art, as well as existential fears that AI will replace human needs in many areas of work. . But artificial intelligence-powered medical technology has been in use for years at LVHN in the Lehigh Valley and St. Luke’s University Health Network.
Spokesperson Jamie Stover said LVHN began using artificial intelligence technology in 2018. Charles Sonday, associate chief medical information officer for St. Luke’s Hospital, which also launched in 2018, said in an emailed statement that these efforts have grown over the past few years.
But Dr. Maulik Purohit, former chief health information officer at LVHN, said that artificial intelligence tools do not replace doctors or medical staff, but help healthcare professionals become more efficient and create better outcomes for patients.
Aidoc, one of the artificial intelligence tools LVHN has implemented in its radiology department, can instantly read all imaging studies to help radiologists diagnose patients and help determine which patients need immediate care. Aidoc has been trained using a huge dataset of diagnostic medical images to be able to identify patterns in those images that are consistent with serious medical conditions, Purohit said.
The Aidoc software suite used by LVHN is able to identify blood clots in the lungs, collapsed lungs and neck fractures, all of which can be life-threatening. And it’s good at it, too: The program was about 93% successful at spotting cases of pulmonary embolism, the medical term for blood clots in the lungs, and about 95% accurate at identifying the absence of clots, according to a 2020 study Research. Gore said the AI even found cases of pulmonary embolism when imaging studies were done for completely different reasons.
If any of these three critical conditions are discovered, Aidoc’s technology notifies the radiology team and prioritizes imaging studies at the top of the queue for studies that radiologists need to review. If a pulmonary embolism is detected, Aidoc also notifies the hospital’s pulmonary embolism response team so the patient can receive immediate care.
“You can’t know whether it’s urgent or not until you see the study,” Purohit said. “This allows us to automatically identify urgent and non-urgent matters so that patients who need the most urgent care can receive it quickly.”
Gor said that although Aidoc was only implemented network-wide in September, the technology is already working. It saves radiologists time, makes communication between different specialty care teams easier, and leads to better care outcomes for patients.
However, Gore said AI doesn’t diagnose patients — radiologists do that. It only provides recommendations and alerts to make it easier for the radiologist to make the final decision on the imaging study.
St. Luke’s Hospital is also using AI technology in its radiology department. Last May, the network spent $30 million to purchase an AI-enhanced CT scanner from GE Healthcare in Chicago for St. Luke’s Hospital-Upper Bucks. The technology can produce faster scans and clearer images, reduce patient exposure to radiation, detect lesions or tissue abnormalities and map blood vessel structures. It can also capture fine details of the head and neck, which is crucial when diagnosing stroke, according to the network.
The network is also a partner with GE Healthcare in developing the Critical Care Suite, an artificial intelligence embedded in X-ray machines that can help clinicians identify collapsed lungs. Critical Care Suite received FDA approval in 2019. However, St. Luke’s no longer uses the technology and the network is currently evaluating new artificial intelligence technology from GE Healthcare for similar purposes, said St. Luke’s spokesman Sam Kennedy.
LVHN has adopted or will adopt other artificial intelligence software to simplify the work of radiologists.
Rad AI Omni is a tool that helps radiologists identify findings that do not require immediate care, such as lung or thyroid nodules, adrenal lesions, kidney cysts, or enlarged lymph nodes. The software automatically generates a summary of results based on dictation from the radiologist, then compiles follow-up guidance from national medical organizations and inserts it into the report.
This standardizes the advice given to patients and allows radiologists to focus on other responsibilities. Gor says one of the most valuable aspects of the technology is that it allows him to revisit research and make sure nothing is missed, something he often didn’t have time to do before starting with Rad AI Omni.
LVHN hopes to fully implement another artificial intelligence tool, Rad AI Continuity, that will help manage the follow-up care of incidental findings by mid-March. When an incidental finding, such as a lung nodule or adrenal lesion, is discovered, the software will automatically send follow-up recommendations to the patient and their referring clinician, whether that be more tests, scans, or other follow-up care. Rad AI Continuity will continue to contact patients and clinicians until a follow-up appointment or test is scheduled.
“From a human perspective, these are difficult to manage,” Purohit said. “The system automatically realizes whether the person actually complied with the rule or not. [appointment] This way we don’t lose track of the patient. “
In addition to better outcomes for patients, these AI tools can also create better outcomes for clinicians, Gor said.
There is a global shortage of radiologists due to factors such as burnout among existing radiologists and not enough new people entering the field. Gore said tools like this are helping to empower radiologists so they can meet the demands placed on them.
“We do a lot of acute studies. From a human perspective, it’s impossible for anyone to start reading these studies as soon as they’re done,” Gore said.
In addition to making radiologists more efficient, these tools can reduce stress and burnout, he added.
“We’re faced with increased numbers and therefore staffing shortages,” Gore said. “They can’t read studies fast enough, and they don’t have the staffing. What AI does is it makes you more efficient. It gives you a second pair of eyes where you can quickly process and triage patients.”
This is not to say that radiologists in the network don’t have a learning curve when using these tools. Like any technology, artificial intelligence is not perfect and does sometimes cause disruptions to radiologists’ workflows. One of the distractions, Gore said, is receiving notifications when artificial intelligence returns false positive results. But he added that these false alarms were in the minority.
“Humans are creatures of habit. Whatever it is, change is not necessarily accepted everywhere,” Gore said. “A lot of us now after three months are like, how did you do this before? It really helps you be more efficient.”
What other artificial intelligence technologies are used?
Radiology isn’t the only area of care where LVHN and St. Luke’s are using artificial intelligence to empower healthcare providers.
In 2020, LVHN adopted Viz.ai Neuro, an artificial intelligence software that uses algorithms to determine a patient’s chance of having a stroke. If a stroke is suspected, the stroke team is alerted and the patient’s CT images are sent directly to the stroke specialist.
The network is also running predictive algorithms in its intensive care units to help predict sepsis, a condition that can occur during an infection in which the body’s immune system begins to target itself, causing tissue and organ damage. . Sepsis may progress and its side effects may eventually lead to death.
“You want to minimize the spread of the infection, but you also want to minimize the negative effects of fighting the infection, such as tissue damage. The mortality rate from sepsis is also high, especially when it progresses to severe sepsis and beyond. We want to Catch it early before it becomes full-blown severe sepsis,” Purohit said.
The algorithm used by LVHN analyzes key data points about patients and their condition and alerts clinicians when a potential case of sepsis is suspected so they can intervene if the algorithm’s predictions are correct, helping to avoid this. kind of result.
LVHN has introduced other artificial intelligence to help clinicians with their workflow. Health Network spokesman Stover said Nuance is an artificial intelligence software that helps generate notes for clinicians to review and sign off on.
St. Luke’s Hospital also uses a variety of AI-powered tools and software. Sonday said the network uses algorithms developed by Epic Systems to help address risks such as sepsis, unplanned ICU transfers and readmissions by analyzing clinical data.
In 2022, St. Luke’s announced the installation of the Varian Ethos treatment system at St. Luke’s Cancer Center in Upper Macanji Township. This artificial intelligence-powered system allows doctors to tailor cancer treatments to precisely match a patient’s specific anatomy and tumor location.
About 11 months ago, St. Luke’s Hospital began using the GI Genius endoscopic module, a polyp detection system that uses artificial intelligence algorithms to help clinicians find colon polyps before they develop into colon cancer. During a colonoscopy, artificial intelligence searches for polyps (abnormal tissue growths that may become cancerous), other lesions, and other points of interest and flags them to help clinicians determine whether further evaluation or treatment is needed.
The application of artificial intelligence in medicine is unlikely to slow down. The capabilities of artificial intelligence are growing at an alarming rate, which means that new technologies and uses of artificial intelligence are not far away.
However, Gore said one of the limitations to adopting new technology is cost. The creation of artificial intelligence and the secure hosting of software companies are not cheap, which means that AI software subscription costs for health care providers are quite expensive.
Actual implementation is rarely seamless, he added. Getting AI software to work within existing networks and systems requires a lot of IT time and resources. As technology advances, this means more updates and more software being adopted.
“It’s getting better all the time. Tomorrow there will be more and more algorithms that detect other situations,” Gore said. “Whatever you have is constantly evolving, so you need to keep a good rhythm of updating it.”
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