From the May 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The next generation of CAD developers must re-invent the current paradigm in which CAD serves solely as a second reader and becomes much more than just a “black box” that places an asterisk on an image. It should be interactive and just like my resident/fellow, be able to indicate its level of confidence and why it has come to its conclusion. There must be a greater emphasis on CAD as a tool for improving efficiency. An increasing amount of research and development is being put into software that can review images before a radiologist sees them and create a preliminary report and make automated quantitative measurements. Many of these tools are beginning to integrate directly with the modalities and the PACS. These may generate additional information that might not typically be included in a report, but can be discovered by computer algorithms that are part of the electronic medical record system.
Finally, our residents and fellows must be given adequate training on these next generation CAD tools to understand not only their application, but also their pitfalls and how to most effectively harness the incredible power of the computer in medicine as they are already doing in other aspects of their lives.
About the author: Dr. Siegel is Professor and Vice Chair Research Informatics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Diagnostic Radiology, as well as Chief of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine for the Veterans Affairs Maryland Healthcare System, both in Baltimore, MD.
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