How Einstein Healthcare Network is putting AI into action

As the largest independent academic medical center in Philadelphia, Einstein Healthcare Network has one mission – to provide exceptionally intelligent, responsive healthcare and education for its patients. It’s a vision reflected in the radiology team’s careful attention to every aspect of the patient journey – from scheduling and image acquisition to reporting and follow-up. Not only does this involve a commitment to ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and consistency in radiology reporting, it also means deploying technology and solutions that improve radiology workflow and report quality.

Terence Matalon, MD, is chair of radiology at Einstein Healthcare. Under his vision and leadership, Einstein radiologists were among the first in the country to leverage AI-powered innovations, including Nuance PowerScribe One, to help combat burnout with new levels of efficiency, deliver more accurate and consistent reports, and integrate real-time clinical intelligence at each stage of the radiology workflow.

And according to Dr. Matalon, clinical intelligence has been particularly beneficial to Einstein. “We’ve had PowerScribe One here for more than a year. Every day, we have 15 or 16 clinical guidance opportunities embedded within our workflow, derived from authoritative, independent third parties,” he says. As a result of the clinical guidance and standardized reports within PowerScribe One, overall report quality increases, and ordering clinicians trust that the follow-up recommendations are based on accepted clinical guidelines. Dr. Matalon explains that the Einstein radiology department has earned the number one rating in terms of quality at the organization. 

Einstein’s radiology team is leading the charge to deploy AI in ways that inject the workflow with clinical intelligence and help solve some of the toughest diagnostic challenges healthcare providers face today. For example, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Einstein integrated the VIDA LungPrint AI model into PowerScribe One via the Nuance AI Marketplace. Through this integration, Einstein radiologists can depend on VIDA to help process chest imaging studies, which automatically inserts detailed lung density and other previously-unavailable information directly into the radiology reports. Pulmonologists and other lung care specialists can then rely on these reports for patient care and lung disease management, and according to Dr. Matalon, there’s a heightened sense of comfort that the AI is helping make sure nothing important gets missed.

“VIDA has worked well. It imports the information into the report fields exactly. From an operational and technical perspective, it was very easy to implement, and we look forward to more applications coming through the Nuance AI marketplace in the coming months,” says Dr. Matalon. 

In addition to the VIDA LungPrint, Einstein also has implemented other AI tools for pneumothorax, intracranial hemorrhage, pulmonary embolism, lung module detection, and cervical spine fracture.