RSNA:2024 Radiological Society of North America Convention
If you are in the use of radiological equipment and/or a radiologist, there is nothing much I can think of you looking forward to but RSNA. It was unknow to me, until I got into the business of owning and operating X-ray, MRIs, CTs, PET and Ultrasound business. Then, I found out very quickly as all my radiologists wanted to go, and so did our senior operators. That first time was expensive. We came back with about $3 million in orders.
They seem to do post-Thanksgiving because other than in Florida, where I live, business slows down. But what an amazing experience it was for me.
As far as I can remember it was always in Chicago, and as a Floridian, Chicago in November/December is not an enticing experience. This year it started Sunday December 1 with an expected 40,000 attendance and over 700 exhibitors. The first reports are interesting with our focus on AI.
Healthcare Innovations reported that:
In the President’s Address on Sunday, Dec. 1, Curtis P. Langlotz, M.D., Ph.D., told the radiologists gathered at McCormick Place that “Forming intelligent connections from machine to machine, human to machine, and human to human will lead us to an exciting future. Building these intelligent connections will yield amazing technological innovations, with reduced stress, a more balanced life, and ample time to nurture the most intelligent connections of all—the ones we build with each other.
I am not a doctor and for sure cannot read a scan, though I have seen a lot of them in my career. We have noted in these blogs that AI is well suited for a few things in healthcare, the most obvious ones are radiology, pathology, genetics and anything with pattern recognition, like dermatology. The issues are many as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is showing concern as literally stated by the current FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, M.D. has talked about “guard rails for AI” more on his comments in a future blog.
A well renowned physician, researcher, and writer on AI, in particular his 2019 book that changed the way I looked at AI – Deep Medicine, spoke in a key-note address. He is Eric Topol, M.D., a practicing cardiologist at the world-famous Scripps Clinic in San Diego, California. He spoke on December 2, to a reported packed venue. He is quoted to have said some amazing things. First, AI will transform healthcare in the coming years. I can’t imagine anyone that is informed that does not believe that. What he said that froze me, was that “800,000 Americans die or are seriously injured by misdiagnosis”. I have seen report after report, debated by the medical establishment that misdiagnosis could cause 100,000 deaths in America. One of the overwhelming data sets, which drove me to work on creating top of the line EHRs since 1996.
This 800,000 is a new number for me. He went on to discuss the value of years of data collection and algorithms, including Large Language Models (LLMs) that can process a vast amount of data and images. He mentioned other specialties using AI today such as Gastroenterologist in endoscopy procedures to identify polyps at a smaller level than a human eye can detect.
He referenced and example in the United Kingdom based on AI helping in reviewing retinal scans. He predicted that AI would help doctors be more accurate and maybe allow more home care of conditions that would today need hospitalization. Frankly, I cannot opine on that idea, but I know that a hospital is a dangerous place to be, if you can avoid it. No matter how much care they take, there is exposure everywhere. I have felt it at a personal and very painful level.
He went on to literally say that ““Generative AI, not just NLP [natural language processing], can be made into audio notes in multiple notes for the patient. In fact, it’s more accurate than normal notes in EHRs. It can set up follow-up appointments, order prescriptions, etc. And it can even coach physicians to become more empathetic and to become better communicators.”
Then he went to an area that fascinates us- talking about longitudinal data can create “individualized medicine from pre-womb to tomb.” We can expect this kind of data, today locked up in 100s of Electronic Health Records, which can be used to help. Our view is that the FDA is way behind the curve in the use of AI. We see for the Consumer, AI brings them more control, giving them more information.
Dr. Topol lamented of the resistance from the medical community, in not adopting change, also reimbursement issues, regulatory challenges, transparency, implementation challenges and finally and really important gaining trust of both clinicians and “the public”, we like calling us all Consumers.
We will talk about the FDAs’ current view on AI, in a future blog, but I will pre-warn, they are both excited by the potential and very concerned about how to regulate something that is constantly moving.
We truly live in amazing times, and we also agree that AI will change healthcare, but we continue to believe it will be in the high impact areas, as we noted above. We see major challenges in the actual world of physicians not researchers on the cutting edge, where we have 500,000,000 annual office visits in primary, pediatric and internal medicine, where the doctor can only spend maybe 7 or 8 minutes with the patient. We strongly advocate for the Consumer to have their own data, and then AI can suggest them points to discuss with their provider.
About HealthScoreAI ™
Healthcare is at a tipping point, and HealthScoreAI is positioning to revolutionize the industry by giving consumers control over their health data and unlocking its immense value. U.S. healthcare annual spending has reached $5 trillion with little improvement in outcomes. Despite advances, technology has failed to reduce costs or improve care. Meanwhile, 3,000 exabytes of consumer health data remain trapped in fragmented USA systems, leaving consumers and doctors without a complete picture of care.
HealthScoreAI seeks to provide a unique solution, acting as a data surrogate for consumers and offering an unbiased holistic view of their health. By monetizing de-identified data, HealthScoreAI seeks to share revenue with consumers, potentially creating a new $100 billion market opportunity. With near-universal EHR adoption in the USA, and advances in technology, now is the perfect time to capitalize on the data available, practical use of AI and the empowering of consumers, in particular the 13,000 baby boomers turning 65 every single day and entering the Medicare system for the first time. Our team, with deep healthcare and tech expertise, holds U.S. patents and a proven track record of scaling companies and leading them to IPO.
