GE Healthcare in AI collaboration with American College of Radiology

New Delhi: GE Healthcare recently announced Edison will integrate with American College of Radiology (ACR) AI-LAB. The Edison platform helps accelerate the development and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and empower providers to deliver faster, more precise care.

Edison serves as a “digital thread” for GE Healthcare’s existing AI partnerships and products, and by integrating with ACR AI-LAB, it will extend these services and allow ACR members and other radiology professionals to more easily develop and seamlessly deploy their algorithms across hospitals and research centres nationally.

Commenting on the collaboration, ACR DSI Chief Science Officer Keith Dreyer, DO, PhD, FACR said, “ACR has been collaborating with industry, government and others throughout healthcare to promote a thriving AI ecosystem targeted towards patient and clinician needs.”

“Standards, clinical pathways, education and tools are all part of harnessing the potential of AI, and ACR AI-LAB is an important step in that journey. ACR welcomes GE Healthcare’s announcement to integrate with ACR AI-LAB, furthering our mutual goals of improved patient outcomes,” Keith added.

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The healthcare AI market will reach $6.6 billion in 2021, and 39 per cent of healthcare provider executives say that they’re investing in AI, machine learning and predictive analytics. GE Healthcare supports the ACR’s mission to democratize AI and accelerate AI adoption to improve patient outcomes and take costs and variance out of healthcare. By supporting the ACR community’s AI efforts, GE Healthcare can dramatically increase the number of algorithms created and deployed across Edison-powered devices and Edison applications. By offering seamless AI services on device, edge and cloud, Edison also allows each member of the community to participate in the manner that best supports their IT environment.

“AI gives us an opportunity to see patterns that we don't see and change the way we care for patients, which can ultimately improve outcomes, said Dr. Rachael Callcut, a partner in GE Healthcare’s clinical AI development, Associate Professor of Surgery at UCSF, a surgeon at UCSF Health and Director of Data Science for the Center for Digital Health Innovation. “We collaborated with GE Healthcare and their network of multiple hospitals from around the globe to co-develop and validate the X-ray Critical Care Suite* enabled by the Edison AI Services cloud platform.”

Since Edison’s launch in November 2018, GE Healthcare has received FDA clearance for multiple Edison powered devices, such as AIRx, an AI-based, automated workflow tool for MRI brain scanning designed to increase consistency and productivity, and Women’s Health Ultrasound SonoCNS, which automates the process of measuring the fetal brain by aligning the system automatically.

“We want to see these technologies work for radiologists, and what that implies is that they have to work within the workflows that exist today,” said Dr Mark Michalski, Executive Director, MGH & BWH Center for Clinical Data Science. “AI needs to be not only an interesting tool in an academic pursuit but also something that really works and helps us practice our profession better.”

Edison allows data to be traced during the development of an algorithm, which reflects GE Healthcare’s commitment to safe, ethical and effective use of AI, and could radically simplify the ACR community’s ability to create compliant AI applications. Edison’s clinical data aggregation services enable radiologists to combine multiparametric data sets and clinical information from the EHR to create more accurate algorithms. The AI capabilities are just one set of the more than 100 Edison services available to GE Healthcare and ultimately third-party developers.

“Making the vision of the ACR AI-LAB a reality requires the collaboration of industry leaders like GE Healthcare and NVIDIA,” said Kimberly Powell, Vice President of Healthcare at NVIDIA. "Working together, NVIDIA and GE Healthcare will empower radiologists to use AI models at their own institutions, in their medical devices and workflow applications, on the edge and in cloud–all while protecting the privacy of their patients."

For hospital executives, the Edison platform integration to ACR AI-LAB allows GE Healthcare to add continuous value to its millions of installed medical devices with smart workflows. Clinicians who use Edison applications can be assured that the algorithms were developed with and validated by a best-in-class ecosystem of clinical and technology partners. Developers who use Edison will benefit from a common integrated platform that brings together globally diverse data from across modalities, vendors and care settings, dramatically simplifying the transition from AI research to productive AI usage.

“Edison provides clinicians with an integrated digital platform, combining diverse data sets from across modalities, vendors, healthcare networks and life sciences settings,” said Kieran Murphy, President and CEO of GE Healthcare. “Algorithms built on Edison by our ACR colleagues will include the latest data processing technologies to enable clinicians to make faster, more informed decisions to improve patient outcomes.”

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