A new AI orchestration was introduced by Watson Health. It offers to help imaging organizations experience the benefits of having AI applications work seamlessly together. The Imaging Orchestrator will be officially launched at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2021 Annual Meeting in Chicago.

“We recognize that when it comes to applying AI in imaging, it’s hard to go it alone,” said David Gruen, MD, MBA, FACR, Chief Medical Officer, Imaging, Watson Health.

He also added:

“Because each AI application is developed in a unique way with a specific purpose, it can be challenging for organizations to review and assess each one, and then to deploy them in a way that’s beneficial to radiologists and their patients. That’s why, with the rapid proliferation of approved algorithms, staffing shortages, and complexity of disease, the IBM Imaging AI Orchestrator could not come at a better time.”

The IBM Imaging AI Orchestrator is a cloud-based AI service which provides imaging organizations with scalable access to regulatory-cleared AI applications from leading AI solution providers that have been vetted to meet strict data security and privacy standards.  Its design is capable of helping radiologists control their access to AI processing in the worklist and returns consolidated results from AI applications directly into the PACS. IT departments benefit by outsourcing the management of multiple applications from diverse suppliers to IBM. At launch, AI applications from several partners have been validated for interoperability with AI Orchestrator and are available today from IBM.

In addition to the availability through the Watson Health Imaging solutions, Life Image has also chosen to offer IBM Watson Health’s AI Orchestrator to their hospital and health system clients. Life Image, the world’s largest medical evidence network providing access to points of care and curated clinical and imaging data, has created a digital platform using industry-leading interoperability standards to connect 13,000 facilities with more than 160,000 U.S. providers and 58,000 global clinics. Matthew A. Michela, who is a President and CEO of Life Image, said:

“Working together with IBM Watson Health, Life Image will promote universal, enterprise-wide access to imaging AI results and imaging data,”

He also added:

“We are excited about this collaboration and the opportunity to advance interoperability and the potential to improve outcomes for providers, patients, and the healthcare system at large.”

For additional support radiology practices, there is an opportunity to update and improve the clinician’s experience while streamlining workflows. It is a workflow solution that consolidates studies, patient data, and AI results into one insightful and modern interface to give physicians a head start in their reading activities. This cloud-native SaaS is built to support advanced hybrid environments. It also helps IT leaders to optimize the flow of studies, linking imaging data and tools that run on-premises and in the cloud, making them available to reading experts anywhere in the enterprise. Alok Gupta, Vice President and General Manager of IBM Watson Health Imaging at IBM, said:

“These innovative offerings are designed to provide health systems and radiology practices with a smarter way to adopt AI for diagnostic imaging and to improve the reading experience. For health systems, they can help to deliver quality patient care. By supporting physicians and specialists to be more productive by using AI augmented tools, patients have more confidence. For radiology practices, orchestrating AI and workflows can expand their capacity to provide imaging services at a pace to meet today’s growing healthcare demands,”

According to Randy Hicks, MD, MBA, CEO at Regional Medical Imaging, Grand Blanc, Michigan, they are constantly striving to introduce cutting-edge technologies into our imaging environment to support their radiologists’ productivity and their confidence in diagnostic accuracy

In his opinion, in future, AI orchestration will set a strategic foundation to allow scaling up to using additional AI applications with the peace of mind that the applications are vetted for privacy and security and will lower the burden on IT staff.