At RSNA 2016, the majority of significant new product announcements were modalities, not information technology. It almost seems that many radiology IT companies (or business segments) are planning to release new product introductions at HIMSS rather than at RSNA. While enterprise imaging remains the core radiology IT technology on display at RSNA, the big buzz this year was artificial intelligence and machine learning. As part of their Opening Session, Keith J. Dreyer, DO, PhD, and Robert M. Wachter, MD, discussed the good and the bad of the digital revolution in radiology. With artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly advancing thanks to events such as the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge Competition, Dr. Dreyer believes AI will complement radiology and enable radiologists to become leaders in precision medicine; rather than becoming wary of AI, he said, radiology could work with AI to optimize the delivery of patient care.

RSNA 2016 is an essential appointment for radiologists like Eliot Siegel, M.D., who appeared at an event sponsored by healthcare and consumer product giant Philips to tout the virtues of applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to medical imaging. Increasingly, healthcare organizations are leveraging analytics to gain insights that solve inefficiencies and streamline workflows. Access our guide now for the 6 components of a healthcare analytics plan, how to get employees invested in analytics, and more. Corporate E-mail Address: This email address is already registered. By submitting my Email address I confirm that I have read and accepted the Terms of Use and Declaration of Consent.

"When my father was misdiagnosed and administered the wrong medication placing him in a coma nearly 20 years ago, I saw firsthand the need for technology to help physicians make accurate decisions," said Tanveer Syeda-Mahmood, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist of the Medical Sieve Radiology Grand Challenge Project at IBM Research – Almaden in San Jose, Calif. This week in Chicago, Dr. Syeda-Mahmood's mission meets the real world as IBM Research debuts a new Watson-powered demo that shows the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in radiology. The demo is the result of a shared vision by Dr. Syeda-Mahmood and Dr. Eugene Walach from IBM Research – Haifa to help radiologists make accurate patient diagnoses quickly and easily. In any given day, radiologists can review up to thousands of medical images to make health diagnoses. To date, accuracy has relied mainly on medical professionals piecing together multiple sources of clinical information visually and manually to make critical decisions, including electronic health records, research publications and other data.

Rasu Shrestha, M.D., the chief innovation officer at the Pittsburgh-based UPMC health system, serves as the chair of the Informatics Scientific Program Committee at the Radiological Society of North America. In that role, Dr. Shrestha has led the discussions that have created the official theme each year for the past two years, for the imaging informatics content at the annual RSNA Conference. Last year, the theme was 3D printing; this year, it is machine learning. Dr. Shrestha took out time on Nov. 29 during the frenzy of activity at RSNA 2016, being held at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, to speak with Healthcare Informatics Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland, about the current state and future prospects of radiology practice and of imaging informatics. Below are excerpts from that interview.