The medical community is always looking for new and better ways to serve patients and save lives. Science, medicine, and technology often intersect to break barriers and create innovative new treatments – and nowhere is that truer than in the field of nuclear medicine.

What is Nuclear Medicine?

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering defines nuclear medicine as a specialty that uses radioactive tracers to diagnose and treat disease. Nuclear medicine is invaluable for patient care, as it can help detect disorders in the bones, gall bladder, heart, and much more.

This field has seen tremendous advancements in recent years, which offer the potential for incredible and life-saving benefits. Here are some of the latest developments in nuclear medicine.

Making AI More Effective

Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of medicine for decades, particularly in the realm of diagnostics. And now, new research suggests that nuclear medicine may make AI-based diagnostics even more effective.

For example, researchers in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM) suggest that nuclear imaging can help with machine learning and AI cancer diagnoses. This is because nuclear imaging creates a high contrast between tumors and normal tissue, making it much easier for the machine to identify abnormalities. Combining AI diagnostics with nuclear medicine can make the machines more accurate, which will ultimately result in better patient care over time.

Detecting Heart Disease

Radionuclide imaging has long been used to detect issues in patient heart function. However, researchers are beginning to explore new uses for this technology – including the examination of the heart’s very molecules.

Research from 2020 found that radionuclide imaging is successful at detecting cardiac amyloidosis, a rare condition in which a protein called amyloid is deposited in the cardiac muscle. Amyloid deposits can cause buildup over time and ultimately lead to heart failure, so it is very important to detect this condition as early as possible.

Discovering New Treatments

Nuclear medicine has many potential uses for imaging and diagnostics. However, it also offers many benefits for researchers.

For example, scientists at the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science recently used a radioligand (a radioactive substance used to study receptors in the body) to study whether an antioxidant called ERGO could penetrate the brain and protect against oxidative stress. The study successfully proved that ERGO can penetrate the brains of mice, which opens doors for further research on using this antioxidant to treat conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.

Nuclear medicine is always developing and advancing, and each advance makes it easier to give patients the care they deserve. 

 

Nuclear Radiology Readings

 

We are proud of our talented pool of teleradiologists who specialize in a variety of subspecialties, including nuclear radiology. If you’ would like to learn more about how we can integrate with your current workflow in order to provide preliminary and final interpretations, please contact us now at 1-877-55-VESTA

Rural hospitals are the cornerstones of many rural communities. Not only are these facilities access points of care, but they are also significant financial support to rural areas by being primary employers.

These facilities are essential to the rural communities and make them vulnerable to financial difficulties. There are limited resources to comply with the increasing regulations on these facilities. Also, revenues are minimal due to low patient volume, shortage of physicians and other health care professionals, and a higher number of elderly, poor, and underinsured residents, along with a higher chronic illness rate.

The North Carolina Rural Health Research Program reported 95 rural hospitals closed between 2010 and 2018, resulting in a total loss of local care in some communities. Rural hospitals serve 20% of the population in the United States, making the survival of rural hospitals a priority in the health care system.

To explore solutions to the problems, in 2019, the American College of Radiology distributed a 22 question survey to explore the rural hospital systems’ staffing, recruitment, and retention issues. The responses showed interventional radiologist trained physicians either “do not want to do diagnostic work” (56.2%) or “do not want to practice in a small or rural setting” (48.8%)

The health care communities are continually exploring new models of care to improve these overall challenges rural hospitals face. Government entities and corporate and private organizations continue to explore

changing policies and enacting legislation for this health services dilemma to strengthen the viability of our rural health care systems.

Technology

Expanding the use of the internet has provided a wide choice of tools for rural hospitals to provide better health outcomes for the patients and better workload and communication for the workers.

Technology specialists have categorized solutions that may apply specifically to the rural health care systems.

More Accessible Health Information

Technology can create better communication between patients and health care providers to enhance treatment options, along with access to electronic records.

Digital Imaging

Digital imaging equipment and scanners that digitize documents and images allow radiology, pathology, and cardiology specialists to interpret these images in co-operative care centers at any distance.

Real-Time Patient Monitoring

Specialists can remotely monitor their patients in rural facilities for cardiac and ICU care.

Cooperation between health care partners is essential in the success of technology solutions for rural health care facilities. There are a variety of resources to explore if technology may seem like a viable solution.

Empowering Patients

Health care and health insurance options can be confusing, and many patients have difficulty understanding the process to get the care they need.

Each rural community has unique methods of networking and communicating. Working with existing community communication systems and creating more outreach methods to distribute

easy-to-understand materials can help patients understand their options better and make better-informed choices.

Funding

Funding for changes to the rural health care systems has come chiefly from grants. Still, cooperative agreements with associations, larger medical centers, and government entities have produced remarkable opportunities for outlying area medical facilities.

Team Effort

Partners from many organizations, health associations, vendors, government agencies, hospitals, healthcare organizations, funding groups, existing networks, and telemedicine programs are available to assist rural communities in need.

By identifying common objectives with other organizations, rural hospitals can specify health delivery problems and staffing issues to offer products and services to meet the rural facilities’ unique requirements.

By working together and overcoming obstacles rural hospitals are experiencing, the healthcare field, and the strength of the rural communities, can endure and experience a brighter future.

Vesta Teleradiology works with healthcare facilities in rural areas. No matter how large or small, we aim to help you provide the best healthcare possible for your patients. Our US Board Certified Radiologists have experience in traditional imaging as well as many subspecialties. 

By utilizing Vesta, these small individual and dependent hospitals can have the feel of being of a larger network spearheaded by Vesta. 

 

Since Vesta has many radiologists on staff, the hospital will expend on their offerings, have the access to multiple opinions, can consult with other hospitals in the network, no interruption in the service due to shortage of radiologists, vacation or unforeseen situations

Please reach out to us to learn more at 877-55-VESTA.

Over recent years, radiology has seen many advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). Since medical imaging produces 90% of all healthcare data, radiologists have experienced a heavy workload for years. The COVID pandemic increased the backlog of radiologists, due to shutdowns and COVID regulations. 

Many have turned to AI as a solution to this problem, citing its numerous benefits in several aspects of imaging. AI allows radiologist departments to get more done in a shorter period of time by automating administrative tasks like paperwork, scheduling, and tracking follow-ups, while also prioritizing certain tasks for a more streamlined process. 

However AI is able to do much more than that. It can sort through data and images,  quickly giving physicians the best, most relevant information. Moreover, new AI algorithms also pick up on complex images and markers found in scans, findings that might not be visible to humans. This combination allows radiologists to run the information through an AI program for a second opinion and quicker analysis of the data.  

Examples of AI in Radiology at Work 

AI is currently being widely used in emergency medicine to alert physicians if a patient has a life-threatening condition, like a collapsed lung. The system will filter out unnecessary images and prioritize critical conditions. Additionally, physicians are using AI for stroke patients to reformat images, which allows for a faster processing time. Some of the same processes are being used for brain scans as well, choosing the most relevant images for doctors to save on overall processing time. 

Outside of critical care, AI is increasingly allowing physicians to work with other departments more efficiently. Hospitals in rural areas and less developed areas without radiology departments will be able to implement AI to flag certain images as well. 

Artificial intelligence is also playing a vital role in the field of oncology. Deep-learning methods have been employed to detect breast cancer in patients by teaching algorithms to draw connections between scans. Google is developing a CT scan that will produce 3D images of the lungs from 2D images, so cancer can be detected more efficiently. 

There has been talk of AI replacing radiologists, but many say that is not ever going to be the case. AI still has many limitations. As stated by Walach, an AI expert and developer, said “AI solutions are becoming very good at doing one thing very well. You typically have to have humans who do more than one thing really well.” 

AI developers rumor that AI will eventually replace radiologists, but Vesta has been in the radiology field long enough to know that AI, while very useful and complementary, it will never replace the keen eye and skills of radiologists. Vesta is a consultant of few AI developers and has been integrating the technology in its process, but does not rely solely on its findings.

 

 

With the help of more research studies on artificial intelligence, the field of radiology will see continued growth, allowing for precision and efficiency. However, traditional radiology and teleradiology will still require trained experts to run the AI programs and discern using their expert knowledge to ensure patients are treated with the best of care. 

Vesta Teleradiology

With Vesta Teleradiology, our US Board Certified radiologists work with you to deliver customizable, and accurate reports. At Vesta, we treat AI as not Artificial Intelligence but Augmented Intelligence to help radiologists improve the quality and efficiency of their reads. How can we help your healthcare facility?

https://telemedicine.healthcaretechoutlook.com/vendor/vesta-teleradiology-modernizing-the-diagnostic-landscape-cid-912-mid-83.html

Ten years ago, who would have thought that the future of medical care would include smartphones, virtual clinics, and doctor visits more than taking medicines? Not many people, for sure. But today, healthcare sector has drastically transformed the way medical care is being provided to patients by adopting various types of telemedicine techniques. Be it the use of mobile phones to dispense medical treatment (mHealthcare) or increase in popularity of virtual doctor visits, telemedicine has gained huge traction in past few years. The role of mHealthcare and Telemedicine is further on growth trajectory as it offers an organized yet flexible environment to render medical treatment in the comfort of patients’ home.

While telemedicine had majorly remained limited to large academic medical centers for a few past years, the scenario is taking a sharp turn now. Presently, serving as a core technology in providing affordable and convenient healthcare services, telemedicine ensures that patients receive medical care and treatment ‘anywhere and at anytime’, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. All across the globe, healthcare providers are exploring and investing in several latest telemedicine services that would give way to reducing the time delay in patients receiving care.

As CIOs of healthcare organizations plan to integrate telemedicine into their current healthcare services, investing in the right telemedicine services provider emerges as the top most priority for them. In a bid to help CIOs overcome their uncertainty in choosing one particular provider over another, a distinguished panel comprising of CEOs, CIOs, VCs, and analysts along with the editorial panel of Healthcare Tech Outlook have listed top 10 telemedicine service providers in the current edition. These telemedicine service providers have been hand-picked for their customer-centric approach toward offering telemedicine solutions.

We present to you Healthcare Tech Outlook’s ‘Top 10 Telemedicine Consulting/Services Companies 2019’

Company: Vesta Teleradiology
Description: Full Service Teleradiology provider offering Professional Teleradiology as well as IT Consulting Services designed to benefit Hospitals, Imaging Centers, Mobile X-Ray/US providers and Urgent Care Centers
Key Person: Vijay Vonguru President
Website: vestarad.com

Vesta Teleradiology Modernizing the Diagnostic Landscape

As a highly experienced executive in strategic planning, business analytics, operations, and IT solutions, Vijay Vonguru has seen from close quarters how the everchanging technology and the constant development of new advancements have impacted the healthcare industry. Having led his venture, Vesta Teleradiology—a teleradiology services provider—for more than a decade, Vonguru affirms, “While change is constant in healthcare, what hasn’t changed over the years is the timely delivery of quality patient care. While the processes and technologies continue to change, the fundamentals remain the same. Whether providing the care in person or through telemedicine, it all comes down to delivering highest quality care with rapid turnaround. This is our fundamental guiding principle at Vesta.”

Vesta closely monitors the developments in healthcare, and ensures its clients are primed to embrace and reap the benefits of these advancements. Vesta offers teleradiology services, providing 24x7x365 access to their highly qualified US-based Board-certified radiologists through a secure PACS. The company has been a pioneer in supportive diagnostic workflow technology and quality diagnostic services. With an internal IT team, Vesta is able to review the latest technologies that are available in the market, customize them in a way to help its team of Radiologists improve their quality and productivity.

Underscoring the challenges in this space, Vonguru mentions that majority of problems aggravate because companies fail to develop a proper understanding of clients’ changing needs. To provide quality reports, Radiologists need detailed medical history of the patients along with relevant priors. With the high volume case load that Radiologists need to complete each day, they are being forced to rush through the cases and spending limited amount of time on each case resulting in quality issues. Vesta has invested heavily in its technology to create efficient workflow and make the clinical history navigation process extremely simple. Vesta is working with some of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) vendors to incorporate some of the cutting-edge algorithms that will make the process more efficient and help improve the quality and turnaround.

When Vesta onboards new clients, the onboarding team works closely with the client with a goal of understanding the client’s current processes along with client’s expectations on where they would like to see themselves in the medium-term and long-term future. Once the requirements are identified, the Operations team creates a workflow that will help facilitate the growth needs of the client. “This customized workflow helps the client grow which in turn helps in Vesta’s growth creating a win-win strategy,” explains Vonguru. Client facilities are under constant pressure from their competition as well as patient

While change is constant in healthcare, what hasn’t changed over the years is the timely delivery of quality patient care

demands. Vesta’s 24x7x365 customer service is available to answer any questions and address client’s needs.

The uniqueness of Vesta comes from its ability to adapt. Vesta and its staff are aware of the changes that are happening in the healthcare industry and know that the company has to constantly reinvent itself to stay relevant and support its clients to navigate their demands, and at the same time providing support to its Radiologists to be efficient and maintain high quality. As described by Vonguru, the strength of the organization lies in its three pillars—the technology, the operational staff, and the workflow.

Moving forward, Vesta is working on implementing its knowledge gained over a decade in Teleradiology in the areas of cardiology, neurology, psych and other medical areas. “We aim to combine all workflows while following the standard guiding principles to ensure quality diagnosis and deliver effective and timely treatments for the patients,” concludes Vonguru.

https://telemedicine.healthcaretechoutlook.com/vendor/vesta-teleradiology-modernizing-the-diagnostic-landscape-cid-912-mid-83.html