“It allows us to streamline our workflow and basically identify those critical cases faster so we can get the healthcare team the information they need ASAP.”
FORT SMITH, Ark — Mercy Hospital in Fort Smith is harnessing the capability of artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize healthcare, helping identify medical conditions faster and streamlining the workflow for radiologists. It’s now part of the 25% of U.S. hospitals using predictive analysis driven by AI. The new system called Aidoc allows radiologists to identify critical findings in patients through CT scans or X-rays.
“It allows us to streamline our workflow and basically identify those critical cases faster, so we can get the healthcare team the information they need as quickly as possible,” radiologist Logan Bell said. “It has really helped me feel more efficient, especially on weekends, when there are less radiologists here and we’re able to prioritize those studies first. It has really helped us make a huge difference in delivering this patient care and be more confident that we’re reading things as quickly as we possibly can and delivering the best patient outcome.”
Bell said the system helps flag serious issues within the patient. Critical findings include brain bleeds in strokes, pulmonary embolisms, aneurysms, and pneumothorax in the chest.
“There’s a ton of things that it’s helping us to identify,” she said.
With this new system in place, identifying critical findings at Mercy Fort Smith is much faster than ever before.
“We would click on a study, and we would read it, and we would usually get things done. The longest delay was just in clicking on the study itself,” she said. “Whenever you have a long work list with a lot of studies, and you’re just trying to prioritize the ones that have been on the work list longest, but now, since we’re able to click on those first, it probably has cut down what took us 20 minutes to less than five.”
The new system is already making a positive impact in Mercy Hospitals across the nation.
“Early evidence is already showing that we’ve seen an 80% reduction in the timing of getting those critical cases information to the doctors,” Bell said. “We scanned thousands of patients using this algorithm, and it has helped us to identify these critical findings.”
Between Jan. 20 and Feb. 19, Mercy Hospitals using Aidoc analyzed 31,467 patients and the system flagged 1,843 of those patients.
On Feb. 21, Aidoc software rolled out at Mercy Hospital in Rogers as well.