Mass Customization in Medical Imaging

As a business sector matures, processes often evolve from a customized production model to mass production to mass customization. For example, consider the business process for manufacturing kitchen cabinets. In the first phase, craftsmen uniquely produce each cabinet. Next, an innovator disrupts the manufacturing model, lowering costs by mass producing cabinets on an assembly line. That’s great for customers who want reliable, low-cost cabinets, but not great for workers. Instead of creatively crafting cabinets, a lower-skilled worker helps to repetitively produce or assemble the same cabinet component. In the next phase, innovators find ways to combine mass production techniques with customized creativity to produce cabinets that command a higher price, while keeping manufacturing costs relatively low. The market becomes segmented, with some customers opting for mass produced, low-price cabinets and others paying a premium price for more uniquely crafted products.

What does this story have to do with medical imaging? In the span of my career, diagnostic imaging has evolved from a customized service to a mass production model. Mostly gone are the days of individually protocoling exams. Diagnoses that once required highly customized craftsmanship (such as myelography or pneumoencephalography) have been replaced by mass production methods (CT, MR). The diagnostic radiologist has gone from the maître d’ of the hospital with a highly varied day of consultation, procedures, and exam reading to reading exams remotely from an automated worklist. Society is hungry for medical imaging that is reliable and low-cost, and in fact the cost of medical imaging relative to other healthcare items has radically dropped over the past forty years, especially for consumers who understand their buying power. After all, the MRI that cost $1000 in 1986 can be purchased just about anywhere for under $500 cash today. The interesting difference between diagnostic imaging and many other examples of mass production is that the assembly line worker, the radiologist, must be more highly skilled than ever and is in short supply. So, while the job of being a reading physician has become more narrow in many ways, compensation has increased because efficiency has markedly increased.

To compete today, medical imaging organizations must have the technology, people, and processes to adopt a low-cost mass production model. In other words, efficiency must further increase in a way that is compatible with the health and capacity of the workforce. My belief is that AI-enabled cloud computing will be essential for organizations to be competitive. Furthermore, this technology will enable creative organizations to deliver higher value by mass customizing medical imaging in ways that we can only dream of today.

Murray Reicher, MD

CEO, Synthesis Health