Lancet Publishes Article on Value-Added Radiology; Applications to All Diagnostic Tests

The August 11, 2018, issue of Lancet includes an interesting letter on "The Future of Radiology: Adding Value to Clinical Care" (392:472-3).   The author, Marc Dewey, is at the Charite' hospital in Berlin.

Dewey opens by saying radiology has to change, since subjectively ordered tests contribute to overuse, tests are inconsistently diagnosed, and reports are often vague.  He provides a worthwhile link to a 2017 article by Brownlee et al., also in Lancet, "Evidence for Overuse of Medical Services Around the World" (390:156-68; open access here).   Dewey argues for better integration of radiology with AI and other advanced informatics, citing Brink et al. (2017).   He also cites to a Commonwealth Fund study in Lancet 2017 that "mroe money leads to poorer performance of health care systems" (2017).    Principally, he notes that the foreseeable integration of AI, value-added healthcare delivery, and AI would require large scale changes in current practices and systems.

People have been talking about the evolving role of the radiologist for a decade or more; see Knechtges 2007 (here) and European Society of Radiology 2010 (here) and Charalel 2014 (here).  The Journal of the American College of Radiology, JACR, is now is in its 15th year and and has always devoted a large share of its articles to the evolving practice, role, use, and future of radiology.

The other specialty dedicated to diagnostics, pathology has parallels.  CAP has talked about the evolving future status of pathology for a decade or more, and there are a number of themes, conferences, and articles about "Laboratory 2.0" (also here) which are similar to the themes touched by Dewy 2018.  The role of AI and pathology are being discussed, e.g. Sharma and Carter, 2017.