Vesta Teleradiology

How is Teleradiology and AI Impacting the Medical Industry Today?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the medical industry, transforming the way healthcare is delivered, diagnosed, and managed. With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately, AI is reshaping various aspects of healthcare. From aiding in disease diagnosis to personalized treatment recommendations, AI is enhancing the precision and efficiency of medical practices. Moreover, AI-powered technologies are streamlining administrative tasks, optimizing resource allocation, and improving patient outcomes. As AI continues to advance, it holds immense potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery, foster medical innovations, and ultimately improve the quality of patient care on a global scale.

Teleradiology has had a profound impact on healthcare by enabling remote access to radiology expertise, bridging geographical barriers, and ensuring timely diagnoses. It has improved patient care by providing faster turnaround times, facilitating collaboration among radiologists, and increasing access to specialized interpretations, ultimately enhancing diagnostic accuracy and treatment outcomes. Going even further, a latest white paper from One Call describes how teleradiology and AI are helping reduce the strain of the radiology shortage.

Teleradiology and AI in Action

Medical imaging vendor, Nanox, is looking to address heath disparities and lack of access care with a new x-ray system which would be offered to countries in Africa, Asian and South American using a pay-per-scan model. The potential of combining cold cathode X-ray technology with teleradiology and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance diagnostic capabilities and improve healthcare economics. Cold cathode X-ray systems offer advantages such as reduced energy consumption and improved image quality. When integrated with teleradiology, these systems can enable remote interpretation of X-rays, leading to faster diagnoses and improved patient care. Additionally, the use of AI algorithms in conjunction with cold cathode X-ray technology has the potential to enhance image analysis, automate certain tasks, and optimize resource allocation, offering cost-saving opportunities in healthcare settings.

diagnostic imaging — A teleradiologist examines a chest x-ray

There are plans to roll out AI-powered teleradiology by the “Screen for Life” program at the Primary Health Care Corporation in Qatar, aimed at early detection and prevention of cancer in the United Arab Emirates. The program plans to utilize AI algorithms to analyze radiology images, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of cancer screening. The integration of AI in teleradiology will help automate image interpretation, expedite diagnoses, and reduce the workload on radiologists. The implementation of AI teleradiology in the “Screen for Life” program is expected to improve cancer detection rates, streamline healthcare processes, and ultimately save lives by identifying cancers at earlier stages.

Vesta Teleradiology

Looking to outsource your radiology interpretations using an expert Teleradiology company that is at the forefront of technology including AI? Please reach out to Vesta to learn more. Vesta Teleradiology can accommodate any type of volume, large, medium and small.

Sources:

Radiologybusiness.com
menafn.com
openai.com
cdc.gov

Social Media Tips to Help Healthcare Facilities Connect with Patients

Social media is an ever-changing landscape, but it remains one of the best ways for healthcare facilities to reach and engage with current and potential patients. If you’re a healthcare facility looking to get started on social media, here are a few tips to help.

Listen First, Talk Later

Before creating content or engaging with people on social media, listening and observing what’s already happening in your industry is essential. Read up on trending topics, follow influencers, and join conversations relevant to your healthcare facility—this will give you a better understanding of what kinds of content resonates with your target audience.

Once you understand the conversation, you can create content or join existing discussions.

social media for healthcare — How are you connecting with patients online?

Spread Awareness of Services

Content doesn’t have to be hard to produce. Does your facility offer mammograms or other diagnostic imaging services? What type of special treatments do you offer patients? Let it be known through your posts! Whether you make a short informative Instagram Reel or a simple graphic, it’s ever crucial to make sure people know what you offer.

Build Relationships

Social media is all about building relationships, so pay attention to how you interact with others online.

Respond thoughtfully to comments and questions from followers; if someone has taken the time to reach out to you via social media, they deserve a well-crafted response that shows them that their voice matters. When responding directly to a patient’s question or comment, always use a professional tone and be sure not to disclose private information.

The beginning response to a patient with a question about diabetes might be:

“ Managing diabetes is no easy task, and if you’re a diabetes patient, it can be challenging to get your condition under control.”

Or:

“I empathize with the daily struggles you must endure keeping diabetes at bay. The good news is that there are ways to help make this easier for you.”

Be Transparent

Social media should be an opportunity for transparency between yourself and your followers.

health care social media tips — Show the faces behind your healthcare team

Share behind-the-scenes photos and videos from your day-to-day operations; this helps build trust by showing that real people work hard at your facility daily. It also allows patients who may not have visited before to get familiarized with the space beforehand, making them more comfortable when they arrive for their appointment or procedure.

Monitor Your Reputation

As a healthcare facility on social media, you must monitor what’s being said about you online – positive and negative.

Be sure to set up alerts for your company name as well as any hashtags associated with it to allow you to keep tabs on mentions of your brand.

If anything negative is posted about you online (such as negative reviews), you can address it quickly before the situation escalates. When a person posts a positive comment, be sure you “like” them, or comment back, so your followers know you respected their opinion.

A respectful response to a negative review about a rude employee at a hospital might be:

“At our hospital, all our staff members strive to ensure the highest level of quality care and customer satisfaction possible. Unfortunately, it’s not always achieved as intended due to human error and environmental stressors.”

“We recognize that patient care starts with respectful communication and interactions between patients and healthcare providers. To improve communication throughout the institution, we are investing in additional staffing resources so that nurses and other team members feel better supported when high volumes present themselves on certain days or times during their shifts.”

Measure Results

Lastly, measure the results of your social media efforts using analytics tools.

Using these tools will allow you to track how many people are visiting your page (and how often), see where they came from (e.g., organic search vs. referral traffic), and track engagement over time (likes/comments/shares). This information will help inform future decisions about what kind of content works best for engaging with patients online.

By measuring results regularly, you can continually refine and improve your strategy over time, so it eventually becomes second nature.

Social media can provide significant benefits for healthcare facilities looking to connect more deeply with current & potential patients—but only if done correctly.

Following these tips will ensure your presence on social media is practical & compliant with relevant regulations & guidelines set forth by governing bodies.

Take some time today & begin implementing these tips into practice right away. Your healthcare facility’s social pages will become vibrant hubs of conversation & connect with the community.

Good luck & happy posting!

Advancements in Imaging: Colorectal Cancer

In the past, colorectal cancer was familiar as a disease to affect the older generation. However, advancements in treating and detecting colorectal cancer have shown the risk is prevalent in those younger, too. Now more than ever, screening tests are important so treatment can start sooner for better outcomes.

What Is Colorectal Cancer?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines Colon cancer as “a disease in which cells in the colon or rectum grow out of control.” The rectum can develop polyps, with some growing in size. Those larger polyps can turn into cancerous ones. Smaller polyps rarely form a malignant growth.

How Is Rectal Cancer Treated?

Doctors stress the importance of recognizing the early symptoms of colorectal cancer and getting regular screenings to check it before it spreads. “If the patient is diagnosed with a stage one or localized cancer, where it’s just in the colon and hasn’t moved elsewhere in the body, it’s about 90% curative just with surgery,” Dr. Paula Denoya, director of the Colorectal Surgery Residency Program at Stony Brook Medicine told NBC news.

The first step for doctors to create a treatment plan for colon cancer is by finding what stage the cancer is in. Medical advancements in imaging have allowed this process to be more thorough and quicker to detect the area and size of cancer. The recent death of Kirstie Alley brought more attention to colorectal cancer since doctors shared this was the cause of her death. Unfortunately, Alley’s family said she had only found cancer shortly before her untimely death Monday. She died at 71 years of age.

How Imaging Helps With Colorectal Cancer Detection

Diagnostic imaging allows doctors to see what the insides of the colon are doing, which will point out if any tumors are more than benign. Newer imaging procedures give doctors an even closer look at the rectal and surrounding areas in the body.

Endoscopic ultrasounds are more invasive than routine colonoscopies. While both are meant to detect and/or provide a more thorough diagnosis, endoscopic ultrasounds go even further, using sound waves that go back and forth off of the inner body. This provides a detailed picture that doctors can study to see how rectal cancer has progressed or lessened if additional treatments were already in the queue.

Endoscopic ultrasounds have two types; upper and lower endoscopic ultrasounds. Lower endoscopic ultrasounds deal with the parts of the body in the rectum to examine tumors closely. Doctors will use an endoscopic ultrasound after other imaging screenings show potential for malignant tumors. It gives doctors the ability to treat cancer with a more reliable decision.

CT scans are another way doctors find and diagnose what stage the cancer in the colon is at. However, endoscopic ultrasounds have a higher percentage of precisely showing what stage the cancer is in.

Additional Imaging Diagnostics For Colon Cancer

A newer technique of diagnostic imaging is molecular imaging. Molecular imaging projects a picture of the cells in the body and their activity. This means doctors can see more information about a mass before it gets worse. If a tumor is present, many times before symptoms begin to aggravate a patient, this technology is able to see that cancer in the beginning stages.

Molecular imaging uses positron emission tomography or (PET) technology. A mixture, called a radioactive, is injected into the blood, and omits an image of the patient’s molecules and/or cells. If cells are numerous, this may mean colorectal cancer has spread.

Staying on top of sudden changes in the bowels, appetite, and illness is key in fighting to stop colorectal cancers before they grow larger. Regular screenings can catch otherwise undetected cancer. The advancements that technology has granted the medical world has saved more lives. The important part is ensuring these technologies are used.

Vesta Teleradiology: At the Forefront of Scientific Advancements

Vesta Teleradiology is a tech-forward teleradiology company, assisting various healthcare facilities with preliminary and final interpretations. If you’re seeking someone to fill your gaps, like nights and weekends, please contact us: 877-558-3782