Sectra Launches World Class AI-driven Reporting Solution in the U.S.

When rads spoke, Sectra listened 

Given Sectra’s record of winning awards and expanding installations, Ekström suggests, its latest edition of Sectra Reporting is likely to find a broad base of interested radiologists when it comes to market in 2027. 

“The product we are launching in North America next year isn’t just a replication of an existing solution,” he says. “It is a truly new and improved iteration.”

The new Sectra Reporting will give many radiologists a lively experience that may even border on novel for some, he adds. 

“A number of early adopters will see that it matters when AI is front and center and the diagnostic cockpit concept is Sectra’s North Star,” Ekström says. 

It also matters that Sectra Reporting works best as an integral component of the celebrated Sectra Enterprise Imaging platform, he notes.

Asked about the genesis of Sectra Reporting, Ekström names radiology’s profession-wide shift from RIS-based reporting to PACS-based reporting back in 2014 and 2015. 

The resulting product development was sparked by radiologists themselves, he recalls.

“The main message was that they wanted eyes on images, not on computers,” Ekström says. “And this was not just a few radiologists—it was coming from just about every rad you talked to.” 

Close kin of an acclaimed product line 

By then Secta had already won Best in Klas honors for its PACS. In the years since, the company has repeated the achievement more than 40 times, mostly for Sectra PACS as well as Sectra Digital Pathology. 

Meanwhile Sectra Reporting has been evolving in its own right and, along the way, building a broad user base around the world. The North American launch “signifies the next step in this journey,” Ekström says, “bringing an original experience and accelerated innovation.”

As part of the Sectra Enterprise Imaging platform, Sectra Reporting is a “close relative” of highly decorated Sectra PACS, he points out.

Sectra Reporting operates as a built-in module or add-on within the Sectra IDS7 diagnostic workstation application, he adds, adding that IDS7 and Reporting “work together in a cohesive, all-in-one ecosystem.”

Obvious next question: How does this shop talk translate to a concise description of better workflows for end-users? 

“Sectra Reporting stays out of the radiologist’s way so he or she can fully focus on diagnosing the patient’s condition,” Ekström replies. “It lets the rad stay in one diagnostic cockpit, undistracted by ‘computer stuff,’ throughout each and every patient case. That’s pretty huge.”

North American nexus between development and demand 

Today every market in which Sectra operates is predominated by PACS-based reporting in one flavor or another. That includes North America. 

Hence the move to bring Sectra Reporting to the U.S. and Canada now that it’s installed in approximately 150 sites across 21 countries, handling more than 30 million radiology reports per year for 14,000 active end-users. 

“We feel 2027 is the right time to bring Sectra Reporting to American and Canadian radiologists,” Ekström says. “It’s now fully ripe on the vine, and we want to offer all our client radiologists the complete range of integrated capabilities that Sectra has been supplying to other regions of the world.” 

He uses his voice to emphasize the word integrated.

“We know the demand is there. One by one, our North American radiologists have told us,” Ekström reports. “A lot of them have long praised our PACS, enterprise imaging, cybersecurity or another Sectra technology. Now they want Sectra as their full ecosystem.” 

Antidote to tech-compounded burnout 

On that front, the widely publicized sunsetting of PowerScribe 360 is presenting Sectra with an additional opening, Ekström acknowledges. By now it’s no secret, he notes, that Microsoft/Nuance is set to end renewals and maintenance for the line this summer before cutting off all support next year and coaxing end-users into the cloud with PowerScribe One. 

However, there’s another reason for the timing of Sectra Reporting’s long-awaited debut on this continent: The rate of radiologist burnout has been skyrocketing in recent years. 

Here Ekström cites data from the American College of Radiology showing close to 50% of radiologists now suffer with the condition. Relatedly, only 25% to 35% report high career satisfaction.

“Paradoxically, AI only seems to be adding to the misery,” Ekström says. 

“AI was supposed to make radiologists’ lives easier. But it’s often doing just the opposite.”

— Ekström

He says Sectra Reporting has features to counteract burnout-related exhaustion, especially in instances where technology hurts rather than helps. 

“It’s all about equipping radiologists to keep eyes on images,” Ekström says. “We want to make rads so graceful at reading images that they never have to look away to check their computing tools.” 

Indispensable ingredient: Physician input  

There’s another thing to know about the subject at hand, Ekström says. In the age of AI, Sectra believes radiology reporting holds a key for optimizing the radiologist’s experience of the full diagnostic workflow. 

“AI is clearing a way to shift the whole experience,” Ekström clarifies. “A lot of vendors have long concentrated on AI for image interpretation, as if interpretation exists in an experiential vacuum.” 

In the bigger picture, he suggests, AI-assisted reporting can bring “elegant simplicity” to the total diagnostic workflow. “This can add satisfaction and even joy to the experience of reading medical images.” 

With that, Ekström pivots to a separate point: the role radiologists and pathologists have played in designing and refining Sectra products—including Sectra Reporting—ever since each technology was only a spark in its engineers’ imaginations.

Radiologists and pathologists “tend to be opinionated, smart, passionate and demanding,” Ekström observes. “They have very high expectations. That’s especially so in America, and we appreciate the trait because it constantly pushes us to be better.” 

• Editor’s note: For more, explore Sectra Reporting here or contact Sectra product & service experts here.