Challenges Facing Radiology with Optum Insight’s Tracy Byers

Keri Stephens (00:11)
Hi, welcome to the HTM 24×7 podcast. I’m your host, Keri Stephens For this episode, I’m joined by Tracy Byers, CEO of Enterprise Imaging at Optum Insight. Tracy, thanks for joining me today.

Tracy Byers (00:25)
Thank you so much, Carrie. I’m excited to talk a little bit about imaging.

Keri Stephens (00:30)
Yeah, we’re excited to have you, especially, know, RSNA is coming up in two weeks from the time of recording. we’re recording this mid November and, you know, it’s, it’s always an exciting time in imaging because so much is coming out because, you know, people are talking about their new products pre RSNA. So I wanted to get you on before RSNA to kind of talk about and build some excitement in this. So to start, what do

think are the most pressing challenges currently faced in the radiology industry.

Tracy Byers (01:03)
You know, I think the one that’s been around for a couple of years, but it’s still very much a huge challenge is workforce shortages, both for rad techs, radiologists, cardiologists, just across the board, a workforce shortage. And it’s really causing physician burnout that we hear so much about. And it’s just really challenging for healthcare systems to manage.

Keri Stephens (01:33)
Yeah, I wanted to talk about that too, because we’ve noticed that that’s been a big trend, burnout shortages. So what are some recent advancements in imaging technology and Optum Insight that are solving these challenges?

Tracy Byers (01:47)
Yeah. So I think the biggest example is that we are deploying our cloud native solution. So helping healthcare systems take their, you know, probably 10, 20 year old enterprise imaging systems to the cloud. And that’s bringing a couple of things that really help with physician burnout and workforce shortages. One is it’s really allowing for easier and better deployment.

for AI algorithms that they’re looking at for both workflow efficiencies and for actually diagnostic support. And then I think also just making sure that they are able to interface with their EMRs so that they’re getting collaboration tools across organizations. Cloud also really helps enable virtual care, whether it’s physicians,

know, collaborating across geographies or different health systems or even within a health system. And so there’s a bunch of different dimensions where cloud is really, I think, helping to address this in a number of different ways.

Keri Stephens (03:04)
Yeah, and I want to talk about clouds. So in what ways does cloud imaging approve the coordination and communication between radiologists and referring physicians?

Tracy Byers (03:15)
Yeah. So when you deploy in the cloud, you know, I recently read an article, that one of the baselines for any technology advancement in imaging is really performance. And so if you deploy changes or you deploy, new technology, it can’t, it can’t harm or degrade performance, whether it’s time to first image for radiologists when they’re looking at a study.

or even the tools they might access to collaborate. And when you deploy in the cloud, it’s doing a couple of things. One is you’re leveraging public cloud technologies that are infinitely scalable. They have four nines or what we call 99.99 % uptime. And it’s really helping when

physicians are collaborating in an urgent case and they’re able to do so. And they really don’t, they’re not concerned with any sort of performance degradation and or any downtime. You know, one of the best examples that I think about is we’re hearing about so many cyber attacks in healthcare systems across, you know, so many different healthcare systems. And that can bring

just significant impact with healthcare system. And some, in some cases we hear about months of downtime before they’re able to restore some of these systems. And when you think about deploying in a public cloud, you have zero downtime in those situations because, unlike so many systems today that are deployed on-premise in a healthcare system, the cloud system has been outsourced, to the enterprise imaging vendor.

with a simple and predictable SAS model that just allows so much protection in these kind of situations. So lots of different dimensions to how it really helps support physician burnout and just physician productivity, both from the IT perspective and from the clinical perspective.

Keri Stephens (05:29)
Okay, great. So how does the ability to access imaging anywhere, anytime impact the quality of care provided to patients?

Tracy Byers (05:38)
Yeah, so I think oftentimes when you see patients, you know, going in for a consult with their, you know, either their primary care or a specialist, like an orthopedic surgeon, oftentimes the radiologist is located in a different place, a different health system, a different location, and being able to use the enterprise imaging tools to

both look at the study at the same time, collaborate on sort of the care or even the diagnosis of the image is hugely efficient in terms of not having to actually be face-to-face and collaborating, which used to be the case. You had to collaborate inside the four walls of a hospital where the enterprise imaging system was located. And today with cloud and cloud native, all of those tools exist virtually.

Keri Stephens (06:37)
No, that’s great. And I really want to talk about, it’s the end of the year, we’re moving to 2025. So what future trends do you foresee in radiology? And how is cloud technology preparing to meet these evolving needs?

Tracy Byers (06:52)
Yeah, I think the biggest trend that we see coming is really the utilization of imaging data, both for analytics, but also for health systems to sort of understand the different elements of the patients they’re treating, the challenges that they’re facing. The other obvious, I guess, is just the

predominance of AI and we’re talking to so many customers, across the globe, not just in the United States, about how they, you know, create a governance, in terms of choosing AI algorithms to deploy, how they, incorporate them into the workflow. And I really think that both the utilization of artificial intelligence, like, like I said, both on the workflow side and on.

the diagnosis side are going to become increasingly important as you look forward. And if you’ve got your imaging data and your ultimate enterprise imaging solution, cloud native, being able to deploy these innovative tools as they come in the next couple of years with more and more maturity makes it seamless. so sort of having that platform architecture that sits in the cloud

is going to be an underpinning criticality to the strategy.

Keri Stephens (08:26)
No, agreed. And so as a last question, as we’re going into RSNA 2024, which I can’t believe that, what should these listeners that likely will be at RSNA prepare for? What do you think is going to happen there?

Tracy Byers (08:41)
Yeah, so I think our SNA is always such a busy time after spending time with, you know, friends and family in the United States for the Thanksgiving holiday. And I think what we expect to see is at least on the enterprise imaging side, we’ll expect to see just a lot of innovation as it relates to AI.

the cloud and clinical tools that are really help addressing those workflows that we talk about just that really can help aid in physician burnout. I also really expect to see an awful lot of discussion about security, patient safety, and just the importance of scalable solutions.

that are able to be maintained from a security standpoint. Like I said, I just think the prevalence of ransomware and security vulnerabilities across healthcare systems and healthcare data is as important as ever. And so making sure that we’re providing both clinical tools and tools for IT organizations within healthcare systems to improve that is going to be critically important. So it’ll be a busy RSNA for sure.

Keri Stephens (10:00)
So I said that was my last question, I lied. As a last question, I really want to know, and I’m sure you’ve kind of touched on this with the security, all of that, but what’s scaring you most about the imaging field right now and what’s exciting you the most about the imaging field right now?

Tracy Byers (10:15)
that’s a good question. Okay, so what is, what is scaring me is,

Helping health care systems find the necessary investments in an already constrained environment to be able to make the investment to move to the cloud. The total cost of ownership or return on investment is pretty significant. With our solution, we think we can help reduce more than 20 % by moving to a SaaS model. But I think

Free, you know, helping customers make that proposal or get their executive teams to commit to that investment, I think is something that’s critically important. And as, as the listeners know, moving your data or migrating your data is certainly challenging. And that’s an important step in moving to the cloud. And I think that that’s one thing that concerns me. I think the thing that excites me is that.

Once data is in the cloud, it opens up the utilization of so many tools and technologies for collaboration, analytics, and AI that I think are going to make some of the fundamental changes we’ve been anxiously looking for in enterprise imaging, you know, over the last decade. And it is, I think, going to allow us and our, and our clinician users to leapfrog finally the productivity they’ve been looking for. So.

Keri Stephens (11:51)
Well, thank you so much, Tracy. I know our listeners will be really excited to hear what you have to say. And to our listeners, thank you always for your listenership. And be sure to check out www.accesimagingnews.com for the latest radiology insights and news. Take care. Thank you.