“The issues are more about people than about technology.”

Dr. Langlotz outlines the 3 C’s that define a good report: clarity, concision, and consistency (especially with medical terminology). Dr. Davis adds a fourth attribute: that the best reports directly answer the specific clinical question. She thinks about this function in light of the reality that many patients are now gaining access to their radiology reports through EHRs, to which Dr. Langlotz mentions:

“Patients will have a higher standard for their reports than even referring clinicians do.”

He discusses that radiology efforts should ultimately focus on producing a single report accessible to clinicians and patients alike, a substantial task that NLP may facilitate. In an era where it is sometimes claimed that AI will replace radiologists, Dr. Langlotz sees the immediate role of AI as taking on radiologists’ more repetitive tasks, such as measuring lesions. As AI becomes more sophisticated and moves toward detection tasks, it will improve radiologists’ productivity.

Tune in to hear these insights and more on how radiology reports will interact with the larger healthcare ecosystem in the future.

This is Nines’ podcast featuring Dr. Melissa Davis, MD, MBA, Nines VP of Clinical Operations,  and Joel Kronander, PhD, Nines Engineering Manager.

Welcome to Reducing Radiology Burnout, a podcast about ways to save radiologists' time and improve quality of care. To learn more about Nines Radiology, check out www.nines.com. In this episode Dr. Davis and Joel speak of the importance of being comfortable with constant iteration when building a new product such as the radiologist worklist. They also talk about the unexpected benefit of being pushed out of a comfort zone when a teammate questions and questions...and questions why a feature is being requested; sometimes the best innovation comes from building something no one initially asked for yet later realized was the crux of the problem all along.

Podcast Summary:

00:09 - Melissa and Joel outline Nines’ mission to create exceptional teleradiology that improves patient care. 

01:25 - What’s it mean to say that Nines engineers and radiologists work sideXside?

03:26 - A-ha moments come from looking at things from the way engineers like Joel think, which is completely different from how a radiologist like Melissa thinks.

04:25 - How to work side by side when working remotely from each other.

05:19 - The importance of breaking big ideas into small beta projects, and then iterating again and again. 

06:30 - Helping hospitals get comfortable with the concept of constant collaboration when building new radiology tools that help the radiologists and the ordering physicians.

08:40 - Efficiencies that come from iterating, and how those efficiencies are extended to healthcare providers.

Credits

Reducing Radiologist Burnout is a production of Nines. This episode was written by Melissa Davis, Joel Kronander, and Maureen Bradford from Nines, co-produced and edited by TJ Bonventura of StudioPod, with cover art by Julian Lewis of StudioPod.