Companies are looking to grab any technology-driven advantage they can as they adapt to new ways of working, managing employees, and serving customers. They are making bigger moves toward the cloud, e-commerce, digital supply chains, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), data analytics, and other areas that can deliver efficiency and innovation. At the same time, enterprises are trying to manage risk -- and the same digital initiatives that create new opportunities can also lead to risks such as security breaches, regulatory compliance failures, and other setbacks. The result is an ongoing conflict between the need to innovate and the need to mitigate risk. "There is always going to be some amount of tension relating to managing risk and engaging in digital transformation work," says Ryan Smith, CIO at healthcare provider Intermountain Healthcare.

An artificial intelligence (AI) system accurately identified key findings in chest X-rays of patients in the emergency department suspected of having pneumonia in just 10 seconds, researchers from Intermountain Healthcare and Stanford University reported at the European Respiratory Society's International Congress 2019. Traditionally, it takes physicians 20 minutes or more to identify pneumonia from chest X-rays. "In this initial study, we've demonstrated the algorithm's potential by validating it on patients in the emergency departments at Intermountain Healthcare," said Jeremy Irvin, a Ph.D. student at Stanford. "Our hope is that the algorithm can improve the quality of pneumonia care at Intermountain, from improving diagnostic accuracy to reducing time to diagnosis." Early diagnosis could lead to treatment starting earlier, which is vital for severely ill patients, the researchers noted.

Artificial intelligence--a broad set of technologies that enable machines to mimic the human brain's ability to process information, learn and adapt--holds potential in healthcare to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, but it hasn't yet been widely adopted in daily clinical practice. However, some leading healthcare organizations, such as the Cleveland Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare and others, are beginning to build the infrastructure and data science capabilities to use AI to deliver clinical and financial benefits. While some industries are using AI programs designed to recognize speech, written language or visual data or do problem-solving, health systems are gaining experience with machine learning, a subset of AI focused on finding patterns or relationships in data in an iterative, or learning, fashion. Early projects have demonstrated promising results. In some of these cases, healthcare organizations have purchased a commercial tool to help them reach a specific clinical goal, such as reducing hospital readmission rates or predicting which patients are at highest risk of becoming expensive cases.

Zebra Medical Vision announced last week an additional financing round of 12 million led by InterMountain Healthcare, with the participation of existing investors. InterMountain Healthcare, an integrated care provider in the U.S., plans to work with Zebra to accelerate the creation of meaningful imaging algorithms to improve patient care. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Kibbutz Shefayim Israel, Zebra Medical Vision teaches computers to automatically read and diagnose medical imaging data. The company's analytics engine helps physicians and healthcare providers analyze millions of imaging records, in an effort to close the diagnostic gap created by a billion people worldwide joining the middle class in the coming decade, who will require diagnostic services. The Zebra platform has yielded imaging insights that have been validated using hundreds of thousands of cases.

Intermountain Healthcare joined forces with Israeli startup Zebra Medical Vision to develop imaging algorithms that can improve patient care. Zebra sells an engine for physicians and healthcare providers to analyze imaging records. The company said its platform has already yielded insights that have been validated using hundreds of thousands of cases in the fields of bone health, cardiovascular analysis, liver and lung indications. Intermountain said that Zebra's Analytics Engine will enable it to perform large-scale analytics against imaging data for the first time and essentially apply machine learning algorithms to those data sets. Under terms of the deal, Intermountain also led a!2 million Series B round of funding, which Zebra CEO Elad Benjamin wrote in a blog the company will use to populate its Analytics Engine with "hundreds of algorithmic insights needed in order to automatically diagnose imaging scans."

The collaboration will accelerate the creation of Zebra's imaging analytics engine and create neural networks that will use Zebra's vast imaging dataset to assist radiologists with automated diagnostic algorithms. Kibbutz Shefayim Israel, May 24, 2016 - Zebra Medical Vision is announcing a new collaboration with Intermountain Healthcare, one of the top performing integrated care providers in the U.S. Intermountain plans to work with Zebra to accelerate the creation of meaningful imaging algorithms to improve patient care. Zebra is also announcing today an additional financing round of 12 million led by Intermountain Healthcare, with the participation of existing investors. Zebra Medical Vision was founded in 2014 with the vision of teaching computers to automatically read and diagnose medical imaging data. The company's analytics engine helps physicians and healthcare providers analyze millions of imaging records, in an effort to close the diagnostic gap created by a billion people worldwide joining the middle class in the coming decade, who will require diagnostic services.