Imaging IT giant Sectra recently announced that it’s partnering with competitor GE HealthCare on a new initiative. The two industry giants are working toward “seamless integration” of their advanced visualization and enterprise imaging applications. Cardiology and its demanding work environment is the initial focus with other clinical areas to come.
Radiology Business recently sat down with Sectra CEO Torbjörn Kronander to discuss the partnership and what is on tap for the Sweden-based company at RSNA23 in Chicago.
Radiology Business: What was the genesis of the partnership?
Torbjörn Kronander: We have a lot of common customers. The work-life balance in radiology in the U.S. is horrible. It’s the same all over the world, but I would say it's one of the worst in the U.S. It's a very tough life. You think one click is a problem, but when you do that 2,000 times a day, it's a real problem. At Sectra, we’ve been trying to address that. That is also what we are showing at RSNA: efficient workflows. In the general PACS workstations that we offer, you can do a lot of things. About 95% of what you do as a doctor can be handled within the same workstation, but sometimes you need to go out to another program. There are some very specialized applications that typically come from the big modality vendors—like Siemens and GE—and it takes time. You need to go over and start up a different application. You need to log into another system. You need to download the images again, search for the patient. That takes an awful lot of time. So, we suggested to GE: Why don't we make it much more efficient? We compete with GE quite a bit. But when we have common customers in need, we said, “Why don't we team up instead and help them?”
Radiology Business: Why not try to do this on your own at Sectra?
Torbjörn Kronander: We can't. We have said from the beginning that we handle about 95% or a little more of what our doctors do. But there are some measurements that sometimes need to go into fields within the CT image, which are not even viewable by the public. A lot of these big modality vendors are very good at some specific applications that Sectra does not offer. They are different from one vendor to the next, and so it is better to run it on their software. But you shouldn't have that software as a separate system. It takes too much time to spin it up. And with these specialized measurements, you shouldn't have to take that back to the main workflow application and write it down on a sticky note or copy and paste things. You should simply see that measurement directly in the PACS. We are able to automatically populate a report, and that saves a lot of time. Now, it's perhaps only 2% to 5% of cases, but you can save a lot of time in those cases, and that's what we suggested. GE completely aligned with us on this one. So, it's two companies, normally competing with one another, but we see customers in need and a reason to collaborate.
Radiology Business: Does this reflect the business environment we are in today and increasing collaboration among vendors?
Torbjörn Kronander: The world is moving toward open systems. GE, Siemens and Philips and all of these guys thought in the old days that they could own a radiology department. There were hospitals that bought everything—CT, MR, and even the lightbulbs from GE—but those days are over. Customers want to choose the best of what they need, and sometimes buy a GE CT and something else from Philips or Hitachi and so forth. So, you need an open-system environment, as in all computing environments. You don't have to buy a Microsoft printer just because you run Teams right now. It's becoming a big thing in medicine, as well. Some vendors have not yet understood this yet, but it's inevitable. It will come and GE is open to this, and we are at Sectra, as well. At RSNA, we are demoing that we can actually work together, despite competing, which I believe is an absolute necessity for both hospitals and us as vendors.
Radiology Business: Is this opening your mind up to other opportunities where you might cross competitive lines?
Torbjörn Kronander: Yes. We don't compete with Epic, but we have very deep integration with their programs. We want to integrate with other vendors as well. Not all are open to it yet though, but we think they will be in the future. No one accepts a closed environment nowadays. No customer wants to be forced to buy something. They want freedom, and that’s what we are aiming for.
Radiology Business: Could you talk about why you and GE are initially focussing on cardiology and the heavy demands of that clinical workflow environment?
Torbjörn Kronander: We just started and are showcasing it at RSNA. It’s a big space, and one where users often step over to CT workstations or open other applications because they need some special measurement. So, it's a good place for us to start and then add more applications later on. We've done the interface and now we just need to fill in other applications. It will be much easier than doing the first one.
Radiology Business: What's next? Are there plans for other clinical environments with GE?
Torbjörn Kronander: Yes, we will work together on other applications. We started out with cardiology and will eventually add more specialties in the future. That's the intent of us and GE. But we will listen in on what customers think at RSNA and, based on that feedback, decide on the next step.
Radiology Business: Could you talk a little about the increasing subspecialization in radiology and the demand it's placing on the profession?
Torbjörn Kronander: Sam Gambhir was a professor of diagnostics at Stanford University. He once told me that the typical doubling time of all medical knowledge in 1950 was 50 years. So, in 50 years, the amount of medical knowledge needed for clinical practice in the world doubled. And then in 2000, it was 15 years, in 2005 it was 10 years, and now the doubling time of medical knowledge in the world is about 90 days. That's an awful lot to put on someone's shoulders, right? You can't keep all of that in one head and that leads to the increasing subspecialization across all areas of medicine. A surgeon today is not just a surgeon. He's an upper-gastro or knee expert. So, that increases the demand for collaborative environments where you can discuss images and consult with specialists in a certain field.
Radiology Business: Why is combating these challenges and addressing the shortage in radiology a top priority now?
Torbjörn Kronander: It's a major driving force. If you ask a U.S. hospital leader today what their main pain point is, very often they will say “getting people.” Even though you pay doctors a lot of money, they also want to see their kids at least a little bit during the week. A lot of U.S. doctors are on the very verge of burnout, or they've not happy with life. I saw a survey that said 49% of U.S. physicians are considering going to another job, despite potentially earning much less pay. In such an environment, you have to help doctors out. Otherwise, there will be no one left to care for patients. So, we need efficiency. We are concentrating completely at RSNA on workflows and doing things with fewer clicks. We count the number of mouse miles doctors do per day and we strive to minimize it.
Radiology Business: What else are you showcasing at RSNA?
Torbjörn Kronander: We are focused on integrated diagnostics, running pathology, radiology, all of these image types, in one single workstation and with one single back-end. That saves a lot of money for hospitals, as well. Instead of 15 different IT environments, you can have one for all images.
Also, we will showcase added functionality for workflow, driving workflow by AI. Most PACS vendors have their own AI offerings. We said, “no” to this. Instead, Sectra runs an app store because there are 1,000 startups in AI with very smart and very well-funded teams. You can't compare with them. The big companies think they can, but you can’t. We said from the beginning, “If you can't beat them, join them.” So, we have a completely open attitude called Amplifier, where we can can vet AI apps for cybersecurity purposes and allow them to control the workflows.
We also will be showcasing what we call a “one throat to choke cloud.” Most vendors say they can deploy in the cloud, but you end up having to buy the service yourself from someone else. Then you end up with the worst nightmare for a radiologist or hospital: It's their fault, not mine. We at Sectra take full responsibility. We use the public cloud and top contractor and take full responsibility to the customer. They don't have to buy the cloud separately. We include all of it in our service and our price. It's always our fault. If it doesn't work, it's our fault, which is an attitude that people like a lot. We can't blame anyone else because it's always on us.
Radiology Business: What other trends are you watching at RSNA?
Torbjörn Kronander: Integrated diagnostics is important. Having pathology and radiology in the same workflow. Tumor boards are super expensive things. They are thousand-dollar-a-minute meetings. So, we do a lot of integrated diagnostics, where users can view both pathology and radiology in the same workstation and tumor boards can have common reports between the two specialties, integrated all into one oncology report for instance.
Radiology Business: Any new challenges that you’re focused on going into 2024?
Torbjörn Kronander: As part of the integrated diagnostics theme, we're beginning to do genomics, which is something that was requested by the University of Pennsylvania, one of Sectra’s radiology and pathology customers. They wanted us to help them with the workflow environment and tightly integrate genomics into the digital pathology workstation. This way, tumor boards can have radiology, pathology and genomics all on the same display, facilitating more efficient workflows. We are shipping the first version in January, so that's for the next year.
Radiology Business: Are you looking forward to RSNA?
Torbjörn Kronander: It's my 34th in row, except for COVID, so I've been many times. I always look forward to it as an opportunity to see customers and what's cooking in the field. The first one I attended was in 1989. There were maybe two computer monitors at the entire show and one was us. The rest was film, film, film, film, film. It's quite different these days. I also like time with customers. We need to get that ground truth from them. I hear from a lot of customers myself, but it's always through a filter, right? At RSNA we can see the customers directly face to face and we get the truth, which is super important for keeping quality up.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.