The Old King is Dead, Long Live the New King

For over 120 years, radiologists and other healthcare providers have depended on multiple view boxes and then multiple monitors to view and interpret medical images. Visit a radiologist's home and you are likely to see one or more workstations, each with three to four monitors. When space is limited, there may be a switch box that allows the monitors to be assigned to different computers.  Watch a radiologist read, and you will see thousands of head swivels and saccadic eye movements. It's exhausting to watch and even more exhausting to do.

Underlying this approach is the delusion that humans are effective multi-taskers. We aren't. We believe that we can text while driving, watch a basketball game while doing our homework, listen carefully to a patient while typing in an EMR, and concentrate on images while switching attention to the report. We can't. This delusion is dangerous while driving a car and while driving a PACS. I recently had a radiologist tell me the rate limiting step in his reading is that when he hits a certain level of efficiently, the constant head turning makes him dizzy.

Many radiologists tell me, "I must have four monitors to see the report, prior reports, new exam, comparison exam, and EMR.  Once you accept the fact that you cannot visually and cognitively focus on two things at once, creative and far better solutions can be imagined. Imagine for example that when you want to see the report, prior reports, or other documents, they appear in front of you via a single click instead of a head swivel. Imagine that current and relevant comparisons are displayed in a logical and orderly manner based on your preference and you can flip between various comparisons nearly instantly. Imagine you can assemble a montage of current and comparison images that tell the patient's story, then with a single click, present that montage next to the current report, and only then start speaking. Imagine that you can read a mammogram or spine MRI simply by clicking on a diagram to report the findings and an AI button to create the impression.

If you imagine it, you can make it. At Synthesis Health, we have.

Murray Reicher, MD

CEO, Synthesis Health