Source: The News-Enterprise
With a small action Monday, Hardin Memorial Health became the world’s first institution to go live with IBM Watson Imaging Patient Synopsis.
As Hardin Memorial Health radiologist Jesse Bryant officially logged in to make IBM Watson Imaging Patient Synopsis available to the entire HMH imaging team. Witnessed by senior leaders, it put Hardin Memorial Health radiologists on the cutting edge with IBM Watson technology, which those present described as one of the newest, most advanced tools available for medical imaging professionals.
Anne Le Grand, IBM Watson Health’s general manager for imaging, was in attendance to witness the historic event. In health care alone, Le Grand said there are countless applications for this technology.
“We are thrilled HMH could be the first to put Watson to use in medical imaging,” she said.
Le Grand said the synopsis provides a summary view of the patient, by analyzing and extracting relevant insights from the patient records, so radiologists can uncover underlying issues. She described it as a “single-view summary of relevant patient information.”
The average electronic health record contains volumes of unstructured data which makes it challenging to find what might be relevant for a diagnosis, Hardin Memorial Health Chief of Radiology Stewart Couch said.
“This amazing application is expected to provide deep insight and analysis at an exponentially faster speed,” he said.
Couch said IBM technology is unique in applying a radiologist-trained artificial intelligence to decipher the content of unstructured data buried in records and surface it in seconds to inform radiologists.
“We are able to analyze data and extract relevant information in a way that we’ve never been able to before,” Bryant said.
He said the analysis considers data from the present illness, past procedures, medications, indications from diagnostic reports, social and family history, demographics, vitals, allergies and labs.
“It gives us broader situational awareness that will help us make even better patient decisions and it does it in a single view,” he said.
Tom Carrico, vice president of operations and chief information officer, said HMH was selected as a test location during the last year. It became an early adopter of Patient Synopsis in part because of its commitment to technology including Picture Archiving Communications Systems manufactured by Merge Healthcare, an IBM subsidiary, from which the new IBM Watson Imaging tools will pull information.
HMH was a natural partner for IBM to test IBM Watson Imaging Patient Synopsis because of its high-patient volume and its agile, entrepreneurial spirit, Le Grand said.
“It just makes it much easier when you are introducing new technology that is changing the face of health care to come to a place like Hardin Memorial,” she said.
