GE Healthcare announces that the U.S. FDA has cleared Critical Care Suite, an industry-first collection of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms embedded on a mobile x-ray device. Built in collaboration with UC San Francisco (UCSF), using GE Healthcare’s Edison platform, the AI algorithms help to reduce the turnaround time it can take for radiologists to review a suspected pneumothorax, a type of collapsed lung.

“X-ray–the world’s oldest form of medical imaging–just got a whole lot smarter, and soon, the rest of our offerings will too,” says GE Healthcare President and CEO Kieran Murphy. “GE Healthcare is leading the way in the creation of AI applications for diagnostic imaging and taking what was once a promise and turning it into a reality. By integrating AI into every aspect of care, we will ultimately improve patient outcomes, reduce waste and inefficiencies, and eliminate costly errors. Critical Care Suite is just the beginning.”

A prioritized “STAT” x-ray can sit waiting for up to eight hours for a radiologist’s review. However, when a patient is scanned on a device with Critical Care Suite, the system automatically analyzes the images by simultaneously searching for a pneumothorax. If a pneumothorax is suspected, an alert—along with the original chest x-ray—is sent directly to the radiologist for review via picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). The technologist also receives a subsequent on-device notification to give awareness of the prioritized cases.

Quality-focused AI algorithms simultaneously analyze and flag protocol and field of view errors, as well as auto rotate the images on-device. Critical Care Suite and the algorithms were developed using GE Healthcare’s Edison platform—which helps deploy AI algorithms quickly and securely—and deployed on the company’s Optima XR240amx system.

Moreover, GE Healthcare’s Edison offering comprises applications and smart devices built using the Edison platform. The platform uses a catalog of healthcare-specific developer services to enable both GE developers and select strategic partners to design, develop, manage, secure, and distribute advanced applications, services and AI algorithms quickly. Edison integrates and assimilates data from multiple sources, applying analytics and AI to not only transform data, but provide actionable insights that can be deployed on medical devices, via the cloud or at the edge of the device.

Additional partners in the development of Critical Care Suite include St. Luke’s University Health Network, Humber River Hospital, and CARING-Mahajan Imaging – India.