2 major healthcare players come together over AI expansion

GE and Boston’s Partners Healthcare are combining their considerable forces to inject AI deeper into healthcare, and they’re starting with—what else?—radiology.

“Without disclosing specifics, both companies said they will spend a significant amount on the initiative. And both stand to gain revenue if they’re successful in creating useful software programs that can be sold to hospitals around the globe,” the Boston Globe reports.

“There’s hundreds if not thousands of applications throughout medicine,” says Keith Dreyer, DO, PhD, chief data science officer in the radiology departments of Partners’ founding hospitals, Massachusetts General and Brigham & Women’s.

The newspaper says the GE-Partners partnership is the biggest AI project to date.

“GE and Partners said they will develop an open platform that eventually can house hundreds of applications to help interpret medical data,” the Globe reports. “They’re starting with radiology because that field, dealing with digital pictures from MRI and CT machines, more easily lends itself to computer analysis.”

Read the whole thing:  

Dave Pearson

Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.

Around the web

Positron, a New York-based nuclear imaging company, will now provide Upbeat Cardiology Solutions with advanced PET/CT systems and services. 

The nuclear imaging isotope shortage of molybdenum-99 may be over now that the sidelined reactor is restarting. ASNC's president says PET and new SPECT technologies helped cardiac imaging labs better weather the storm.

CMS has more than doubled the CCTA payment rate from $175 to $357.13. The move, expected to have a significant impact on the utilization of cardiac CT, received immediate praise from imaging specialists.