An acute shortage of radiologists and growing demand for imaging scans has put radiology departments under increased strain – and GE Healthcare has developed a next-generation, cloud-based Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) designed to overcome those barriers.
Today, GE Healthcare introduces Edison True PACS, a diagnostic imaging and workflow solution designed to help enable radiologists – who are experiencing high rates of staff burnout and retirements – to be more efficient and precise, while keeping capital and IT resources under control. Currently, it is available in the U.S., with rollout expected in some other regions starting in 2022.
“Radiologists are desperate for the latest tools to most effectively do their jobs. But organizations often lack the financial and IT resources required to access and implement them,” said Girish Muralidharan, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Enterprise Imaging Solutions, GE Healthcare. “With the launch of Edison True PACS, we have taken the first steps to provide cloud-based enterprise imaging solutions that can help transform patient care through accessible, sharable, and secure imaging data while simultaneously improving clinical and operational efficiencies.”
Edison True PACS arrives at a critical time in the industry, as healthcare organizations struggle to keep their enterprise and departmental solutions current as well as secure, while at the same time remotely accessible. Too often, PACS systems require constant monitoring and patching for security vulnerabilities, as well as OS and application updates; these needs also require periodic and capital-draining hardware upgrades. Further, with AI enabling new productivity and accuracy tools, many organizations lack the IT resources to adopt these changes promptly.
Enter Edison True PACS, which provides innovative, AI-enabled decision-making tools that helps enhance reading speed, reduce errors, improve diagnostic precision and enable more confident diagnoses. Plus, as a cloud- hosted or subscription solution, IT budgets and resources aren’t depleted or strained.
These advantages make Edison True PACS especially attractive for small imaging centers and community hospitals, removing barriers radiologists and their organizations face in acquiring cutting-edge diagnostic radiology solutions. By leveraging a market leading database and AI-enabled technologies, the solution gives them a timelier and more affordable way to access AI-enabled decision support applications and intelligent workflow automation.
Through a web-based diagnostic viewer and a zero-footprint clinical viewer, radiologists will benefit from the ability to do remote reading anytime, anywhere, to assist their referring clinicians to ultimately deliver more timely, personalized and precise care.
In addition, GE Healthcare’s new imaging solution is deployed on AWS Cloud, designed to provide users data security and protection. As the leading vendor of AI-based medical imaging applications worldwide, GE Healthcare is in a unique position to assist radiologists be more efficient while helping to improve diagnostic accuracy and keeping pace with the growing workloads and complexity of imaging studies that occur within the hospital or in a teleradiology setting.
Improving Access to AI-Based Clinical Imaging Solutions
Radiology is one of the most promising areas for AI in healthcare and rapid progress is occurring in the field. Clinical adoption of AI by radiologists has gone from essentially zero to 30% from 2015 to 2020, according to a study by the American College of Radiology. However, healthcare providers may be reluctant to purchase AI tools from multiple developers due to integration and implementation challenges. Another barrier to adoption is the need for AI-based image analysis tools to be fully integrated into radiologists’ workflows and tightly integrated.
GE Healthcare has cultivated a rapidly expanding network of 3rd party developers using Edison ecosystem who have created AI algorithms for multiple diagnostic tasks. Edison True PACS seamlessly integrates these into the workflow without adding any additional clicks helping to ensure radiologists read the right exam at the right time.
These applications help reduce radiologists’ read and reporting time and could help lead to a more precise and confident diagnoses. For example, while using an MRI AI application to evaluate multiple sclerosis cases, radiologists report read times that are up to 60% faster than reports performed without the application,and while using an app to evaluate lung nodules on a CT, radiologists report a 26% reduction in read times and up to a 29% increase in diagnostic confidence.
Edison True PACS brings together diagnostic reading, exam workflow, AI, 3D post processing, enterprise visualization and archiving all in a single platform, to provide advanced functionality at an affordable cost.
Key benefits of the system include:
· Over 50% increase in radiologist efficiency for certain types of exams through incorporation of Intelligent workflows and AI clinical applications.
· Potential to provide up to a 90% reduction in typical time required to adopt AI applications due to fully hosted offering and managed services.
· Estimated 50% reduction in migration/implementation costs for customers enabled by cloud automation, simplified data migration, standard Health Level Seven (HL7) configuration, and default workflow configurations with a reduced total cost of ownership for customers on cloud.
“From our perspective, Edison True PACS will save a tremendous amount of money on our data storage, as not having to host PACS on-site is going to be a significant reduction on that spend,” noted Richard Duemmling, Chief of Business Operations at Neuro Imaging Winter Park. “Not having to store back-ups and duplicates on-site benefits us by taking workload off of our production team.”
Matching Organizations’ Needs and Budget
Edison True PACS is available as software as a service (SaaS) or on premise, and in three subscription models to best match organizations’ objectives and budget:
1. Edison True Technologist is for organizations that have outsourced their reading and need technologist workflow, image routing, storage, referrer viewing and archiving.
2. Edison True Essentials provides a low upfront capital requirement, and affordable/predictable cost of ownership. It allows organizations to allocate available funds and resources to support more strategic organizational goals and activities.
3. Edison True Professional is designed to help reduce the risks in keeping pace with rapid changes in technology. It helps ensure radiologists always have the most up to date features to ensure their highest productivity and accuracy.
About GE Healthcare:
GE Healthcare is the $18 billion healthcare business of GE (NYSE: GE). As a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics and digital solutions innovator, GE Healthcare enables clinicians to make faster, more informed decisions through intelligent devices, data analytics, applications and services, supported by its Edison intelligence platform. With over 100 years of healthcare industry experience and around 47,000 employees globally, the company operates at the center of an ecosystem working toward precision health, digitizing healthcare, helping drive productivity and improve outcomes for patients, providers, health systems and researchers around the world.
