The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) has announced the plenary session slate for the Society’s 108th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting—RSNA 2022: Empowering Patients and Partners in Care to be held November 27 to December 1, at McCormick Place in Chicago. The RSNA annual meeting brings together thousands of attendees from around the world, event organizers say.
A diverse lineup of influential thought leaders in medicine and business will focus on radiology’s role at the heart of patient care and the responsibility that radiologists have in creating a healthcare environment best suited to the patient’s needs.
The opening session will be held in Arie Crown Theater on Sunday, Nov. 27, at 4 p.m. Central time (CT). Other meeting activities will begin Sunday morning, including science and education sessions and the Technical Exhibits.
In his President’s Address during the opening session, RSNA President Bruce G. Haffty, MD, will explore an important part of the healthcare equation—the patient perspective. “From reducing uncertainty and anxiety to empowering patients with knowledge and giving them a greater sense of control, the value of imaging to our patients is often underestimated among radiologists, and certainly among other members of the healthcare team,” Haffty says.
Haffty is associate vice chancellor, cancer programs, at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, New Brunswick, N.J. He also serves as professor and chair in the department of radiation oncology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
Elizabeth Morris, MD, will continue the conversation on patient perspective during the opening session. Morris will discuss her experience as a breast cancer patient and how it has fueled her desire to ensure that patient care is respectful and responsive to each patient’s preferences, needs and values. She is professor and chair of the department of radiology at the University of California (UC) Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento.
“Being challenged with my diagnosis and a new job reinforced how radiologists must look beyond who we think a patient is and treat every single patient with kindness and respect,” Morris says.
During the Monday morning (Nov. 28) keynote address, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD, will share his insights into human health, medicine, and science.
Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University in New York and a cancer physician and researcher. A pioneering physician and oncologist, Mukherjee is best known for his books, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer and The Gene: An Intimate History.
RSNA’s Image Interpretation Session will be held Monday afternoon. Mini Pathria, MD, will moderate the single-session event, which will cover multiple subspecialties and offer a cross-disciplinary opportunity to test attendees’ knowledge beyond their area of expertise. Participants can follow along with a panel of experts, identifying abnormal findings critical to making accurate diagnoses and recommending additional imaging exams or procedures.
On Tuesday morning (Nov. 29), Reed A. Omary, MD, will discuss the responsibility of today’s radiology professionals to create the best possible experiences for patients, communities, and the planet.
“Regardless of what 2030 brings, if we link the practices of design for our patients, communities and the planet, we will multiply our impact,” says Omary, the Carol D. and Henry P. Pendergrass Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, professor of biomedical imaging and chair of the Department of Radiology and Radiological sciences at Vanderbilt University.
On Tuesday afternoon, policy takes center stage as moderator Amanda Starc, Ph.D., associate professor of strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, and panelists Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, Robert J. Margolis professor of business, medicine, and policy and founding director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University, and Kavita K. Patel, MD, a primary-care physician and the managing director of clinical transformation at the Center for Health Policy at Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., explore the latest healthcare policy developments and their impact on radiologists and the field of medical imaging in “Medicare and U.S. Healthcare Policy: A National Conversation.”
The Wednesday morning (Nov. 30) session will mark the return of radiology’s favorite game show. Moderated by Tarek N. Hanna, MD, and Jennifer W. Uyeda, MD, this team-based competition provides a break from the annual meeting pace and invites attendees to compete for bragging rights.
Wednesday afternoon will bring together four experts who will share perspectives on using machine learning for risk stratification in radiation oncology and optimizing radiation therapy workflows.
“Machine learning has proven to be immensely effective at analyzing longitudinal-and time-series datasets for predictive analytics,” says Quynh-Thu Le, MD, chair of the department of radiation oncology and the Katharine Dexter McCormick and Stanley McCormick Memorial professor at Stanford University in California.
Le will be joined by fellow panel members Ruijiang Li, PhD, associate professor of radiation oncology and radiation physics at Stanford, Felix Feng, MD, vice chair for translational research in the Department of Radiation Oncology and a professor of radiation oncology, urology, and medicine at University of California, San Francisco, and Michael Gensheimer, MD, clinical associate professor of radiation oncology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
The RSNA/American Association of Physicists in Medicine Symposium will be held on Thursday, Dec. 1, and will center on successful collaboration between radiologists and physicists in technical developments and clinical translations in medical imaging.
The symposium will be moderated by Guang-Hong Chen, PhD, tenured professor of medical physics and radiology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Maryellen L. Giger, PhD, the A.N. Pritzker Distinguished Service Professor of Radiology and vice chair of radiology at the University of Chicago (UChicago), and Gillian M. Newstead, MD, diagnostic radiologist and director of global breast imaging at UChicago.
