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Can AI diagnose medical problems? How does AI help doctors? Can AI be used in medical diagnostics? How is AI impacting the practice of medicine?
Our guest is Jason Wiesner, MD, chair of the imaging service line at Sutter Health. AMA Chief Experience Officer Todd Unger hosts.
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Speaker
- Jason Wiesner, MD, chair, imaging service line at Sutter Health
Transcript
Transcript
Dr. Wiesner: We need technology tools to help us with our access backlog, to help our doctors be able to get through a large, increasing stack of complicated exams every day.
Unger: Hello, and welcome to the AMA Update video and podcast. Today, we're talking about how Sutter Health is using AI to transform medical imaging and what that means for patients and physicians. Our guest today is Dr. Jason Wiesner, chair of the Imaging Service Line at Sutter Health in Sacramento, California. I'm Todd Unger, AMA's chief experience officer in Chicago. Dr. Wiesner, it's a pleasure to have you with us today.
Dr. Wiesner: Thanks, Todd. Great to be here.
Unger: Well, I'm excited to talk more about AI—seems to be at work in so many different places in health care. Today, we're going to talk about the role that AI is playing in imaging at Sutter Health through a new partnership. And why don't we just start with a brief overview of the partnership itself, what does it entail, and why are you pursuing it now?
Dr. Wiesner: Well, it's a great time to be at Sutter Health, and this is an example of it. This partnership with GE, which we're calling a care alliance between our two companies, and there's multiple facets to it, Todd. One, it will accelerate how we update and refresh our existing fleet of imaging equipment. That's a key part of it.
And two, service. GE will take over service for all of our equipment. So we are expecting better uptime, better monitoring, keeping all of our software up to date. And then, importantly, it provides our physicians and our technologists with latest tools and training to make sure that they're up to speed on how to use these tools to the best of their capabilities, and also educated on the latest and greatest technology. So there's multiple lanes to this partnership and we're really excited.
Unger: Well, that partnership makes sense, and it's got benefits for both patients and physicians. Let's start on the physician side because this seems to be a pretty common theme that we're seeing in our conversations with physicians on AMA Update. A lot of thought is going into how to reduce burden, how to help physicians in the work and in the workflow. How are you thinking about that with imaging?
Dr. Wiesner: Well, there's so much demand for imaging services here at Sutter Health. And that's a good problem. But it can quickly become a kind of a negative experience if you're a patient who's thinking about trying to get in for an imaging test or waiting for a result. So we're really focused, through this partnership, on bringing tools to our health system that will break down barriers to access.
So speeding access to care through shorter exam times, that's a key part of this. That will be really important for our referring physicians, who are also waiting for the result to come back from the radiologist before they can proceed with the care pathway. So I think the first thing to highlight would be tools that accelerate our scans to allow us to open up more access for our patients.
Unger: So that makes a lot of sense when the demand is that high, and you've got more access and faster turnaround on the results. Anything else that we should know about in terms of the benefits there?
Dr. Wiesner: Well, for our technologists also, we're helping them be a more efficient. I think there's a lot of interest in AI tools that really allow our people to work at the higher level of their license and be more efficient.
There's some great tools in the GE partnership. For example, in ultrasound that allow our technologists to be more efficient while they're scanning patients. For example, identifying the contours of an organ and even helping them measure those organs in a more efficient way so they can really—where I think about the benefits there, it allows that technologist to be much more connected to the patient talking about what they're going through, and also making sure they get the right images for the radiologist. So some really good efficiency tools for our technologists as well.
Unger: One of the themes that also comes through when I speak with physicians is you got to think more than just about the technology. It's about how does it fit into the workflow. How are you accommodating that when you've inserted this new technology into the process?
Dr. Wiesner: Well, a big part of that, Todd, is the training of our staff. One of the great things about partnering with GE HealthCare, which is really known globally for their business processes and their consultancy services, they're just really good at training and educating, and we're really going to lean on them to keep our staff updated with the latest medical literature, the latest training.
We really want the technologists to be able also to go from care center to care center and have the same equipment that they can work with and feel comfortable that they can provide the same type of care for our patients so that the image quality is high. And then as that goes to our doctors, the diagnosis can be made with a lot of confidence. So I think we're going to really lean on the care alliance in training and education of all of our staff.
Unger: I want to talk a little bit more about the care alliance, because every organization out there is looking to innovate with AI right now. But as you know, incorporating new technology like this is not always easy. You talked up front about how you've kind of decided who's doing what. How did this partnership come to life? Walk us through a little bit about what happened behind the scenes.
Dr. Wiesner: Well, it was several months of work that we spent talking to our doctors. Really, we wanted to make sure that we were making the right decision for our clinicians so that they had the tools that they felt comfortable with, and that include referring physicians from all of our service lines. And particularly in areas like cardiovascular service line, where we're spending a lot of time and effort trying to make sure that we have the best tools for things like coronary calcium scans and coronary CTAs, and same in oncology, to ensure that we have the right tools for what those referring physicians need to make the diagnosis to care for their patients.
And importantly, we spent a lot of time with our radiologists. We have almost 500 radiologists at Sutter Health, and we spent a lot of time talking through what they need to be confident about the diagnosis, everything from image quality to workflow tools that ensure that we have post-processing software, for example. So it was a long process of really getting a lot of feedback focused on our clinicians.
Unger: I really love talking about physicians and AI because, in this case, with the technology, it's going according to the plan that you just laid out, which is a lot of talking to physicians and a lot of attention to workflow. How are your physicians feeling about it now?
Dr. Wiesner: Well, there's a lot of excitement here. And really, the care alliance partnership kicked off about two months ago, and we're already seeing equipment shipped out to care centers, and that's causing a lot of excitement, a lot of buzz. Our technologists, our staff, our doctors are seeing over 100 ultrasound units, for example, have already been deployed throughout the system.
It's getting a lot of attention. It makes all of us in the care centers feel like we're getting the latest and greatest. We get excited about doing our job and, again, the things that we talked about a minute ago in terms of some of these efficiency tools, that that's building a lot of excitement as well. So we're building a big wave, I guess, that we're going to ride for the next several years with GE, and it starts with some of these tools that we can just ship out right away.
We're now pivoting to some of the harder work. Some of the stuff takes a little bit longer here in California, which is the build-outs for some of our larger equipment, as well as some net new installations.
Unger: Well, first, I'm just curious, you're two months in—a lot of positive feedback already. You use the word years when you think about the kind of duration of this journey that you're on. When you look out into the future like that, what are some of the outcomes that you really hope to see?
Dr. Wiesner: Well, one of the key things is looking at our organization, which is large, admittedly, the average age of our fleet was older than we wanted over 10 years on average across all of our equipment. So one of the key things that we're going to be tracking over the next several years of this partnership is we're going to move the average age of that fleet down significantly.
Our goal is to have that under eight and closer to five years overall, which again, is just a number, perhaps a piece of data, but it reflects the fact that we're taking a very broad approach, a very aggressive approach to refreshing our imaging equipment and getting the latest and greatest technology in front of our clinicians and our technologists and our radiologists. So that's the first thing.
I mentioned that we have already started with some early wins in shipping out, say, ultrasound devices. And part of that initial phase of the partnership was looking at data around what you might call table stakes, perhaps, in business, but is the equipment delivered on time? Do we have any downtimes that we might have to divert patients away from a care center? Any lost productivity? And so far, it's been going great. We haven't had any negative effects yet.
As I mentioned earlier, part of the partnership is about equipment maintenance. So we're spending a lot of time tracking service, downtimes, time to resolution. One of the things that's been great, another, I would say, highlighted early win in the partnership, is GE's ability to remotely perform some planned service. So it really eliminates in many cases or reduces significantly any planned or scheduled maintenance that needs to be done. That's really important, again, as I draw back on our good problem of having an access challenge here at Sutter.
We're talking to our doctors all the time and our technologists about the new technology, about how they interact with new, let's say, ultrasound probes, or how our radiologists are satisfied with image quality. When we add some post-processing tools that they didn't have previously, and getting some great feedback, talking to our radiologists and our technologists about that. So I'm excited, even though we're only two months in, to see what I guess I could call early wins. And again, I'm looking to build on that for the next several years.
Unger: That's great news. It seems like every day there's a new development in AI. The level of sophistication of the technology just continues to increase. Talk to us a little bit about how it's being used right now in medical imaging, and ways we haven't imagined yet that it might be used down the road.
Dr. Wiesner: I appreciate that question. In my role as chair of imaging here at Sutter, I'm spending more and more time getting AI into the hands of our doctors. It's become such a key priority. And validating it, importantly, on our patients and on our patient data and in the hands of our doctors—I think that's a key piece there, to make sure that the tools that we see, that we want, actually work in our care center and deliver on the benefits that we're going after.
I think AI has the potential to really transform the future of imaging in multiple ways, and we probably don't have enough time here, despite my desire to do so, maybe, to talk through some of those because I'm just so passionate about it. But we mentioned productivity earlier, productivity for our technologists and our radiologists.
I think that's, in the near term, an area where we need help. We need technology tools, again, to help us with our access backlog, to help our doctors be able to get through a large, increasing stack of complicated exams every day. We're doing that, for example, with things like computer-aided detection, AI-generated CAD tools that can help radiologists not only be more confident in the diagnosis, but also give them some productivity gains as they move from case to case.
For our technologists, I mentioned before some of the repetitive tasks of measuring organs, which can be difficult, not only cognitively but also physically for an ultrasound technologist. I think seeing some of those tools roll out right now at scale has been great.
And the next, think about what's coming next. We're very fortunate to be partnered with GE HealthCare, which I think the numbers probably change every day or every other day. But one of the companies, at least the number one or two in terms of globally, the number of FDA-cleared applications in GE's portfolio is large. And so we're looking to not only take advantage of their existing portfolio of AI tools, but also look to codevelop some. For example, foundational models in imaging that can help comprehensively look at an exam and maybe even draft a report for a radiologist who can then add, validate and finalize that report in order to add not only quality but productivity.
Unger: It's clearly a very exciting time to be in medicine and a very exciting time to be at Sutter. Dr. Wiesner, thank you so much for joining us and telling us more about the care alliance partnership.
Dr. Wiesner: Thanks, Todd. I appreciate the opportunity.
Unger: Making sure that AI and all technology works for physicians is a top priority for the AMA. To support that work, become an AMA member at ama-assn.org/joinnow. That wraps up today's episode. We'll be back soon with another AMA Update. Be sure to subscribe for new episodes and find all our videos and podcasts at ama-assn.org/podcasts. Thanks for joining us today. Please take care.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.
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