Hospital's digital intelligence platform cuts imaging wait times, but with a caveat
Experts have developed a digital intelligence platform they say can improve radiology workflows and increase capacity.
A group of researchers from a large tertiary hospital in China sought to address workflow bottlenecks amid the organization's growing demand for imaging services. To do this, they created a closed-loop digital platform equipped with an intelligent scheduling algorithm and a dynamic report dispatching system. The team integrated the platform into their organization's electronic health record, seeking to improve turnaround times and patient satisfaction scores.
The platform was designed to encompass multiple facets of radiology workflows, from ordering exams, to having them scheduled, completed and interpreted. The group contends that by integrating each of these data points, they were able to develop a comprehensive platform capable of improving patients’ experience. They detailed how the platform has affected their organization’s radiology workflows, publishing their work Monday in Academic Radiology.
“Despite ongoing digital transformation efforts, traditional management models in radiology departments continue to exhibit structural flaws,” Jing Zhang, with the department of radiology at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, China, and colleagues explained. “Consequently, workflows dominated by manual operations remain fragmented and ill-equipped to fulfill the escalating demands of modern healthcare for scalability and real-time responsiveness," they added later.
Compared to the pre-implementation phase, post-implementation metrics indicated that the platform increased exam volume by 66.4% while staffing numbers remained stable. At the same time, order-to-appointment times for CT scans decreased by 72.4% and 33.8% for MRI, while order-to-examination times dipped by 50.6% for CT and 34.6% for MRI.
There was a caveat, however. The time from when an exam was completed until a radiologist’s report had been filed increased significantly—130% for CT and 222% for MRI. The uptick was pinned on the increase in volume, which was not accompanied by a corresponding boost in staffing. Conversely, in the emergency department, exam-to-report times decreased by 22.1% for CT and 26.6% for MRI. Overall, patient satisfaction scores also improved, though modestly.
“While the paradox of increased routine reporting time underscores the finite nature of human capacity, the system successfully prioritized emergency care, ensuring clinical safety,” the authors noted. “The implementation of this platform not only revolutionizes departmental management but also provides a replicable framework for the digital transformation of the broader healthcare industry.”
Read more about the group’s work here.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.