Many medical associations and societies have one-year terms in place for their leaders. The constant turnover may translate to quick changes in direction and vision. So it was refreshing to have a chance to revisit with SIIM chair Dr. Raymond Geis, who’s currently into his second (and final year) of his term. Geis recapped where he wanted to lead the society, what goals he’s accomplished and what else he still hopes to achieve.

DMBN: We had talked last year about some major initiatives you wanted to push. You wanted to make sure that great ideas in workflow improvements and efficiency were put in front of the masses. Is that still a top initiative?

Geis: It’s certainly a top initiative. We’ve probably rephrased it a little bit in that SIIM is trying to promote innovation in the IT process. We see the opportunity to use IT to vastly improve the efficiency of imaging and radiology departments.

We also have a number of young IT savvy radiologists and other physicians and IT people who have solved some of the imaging IT problems, but they need help to get their innovations into the market and we want to help them succeed — certainly in part because their innovations solve some of our issues. A good example is this year’s SIIM meeting will have both educational sessions to help people navigate the innovations process, to help them translate their research or process into something that’s available to the masses. We’re also going to have something called the “innovators alley,” where users and other innovators can network and learn from others who are further along in the process and that’s shaping up to be something pretty exciting.

DMBN: Now the innovator alley, is this the first year that it will be in place?

Geis: Last year was the first year we did it. But based on that, we’re trying to expand it. We learned from innovators last year, some of the issues they had and the things they need just in terms of education in how you go through the process of taking an idea and turning it into a product.
DMBN: With the innovator alley or just the idea in general of turning something into a product, are there companies that work with SIIM to develop ideas of the members or do you give members the background and tools to seek them out?

Geis: In general, we give innovators tools to seek those people out. We do see that some of those companies are at the meeting and watching for things and are curious about where the next great thing is going to come from. And SIIM certainly is positioned uniquely among imaging IT societies to be at the front at where things are showing up first. But we don’t have a specific group of people that show up constantly to look at the new innovations.

DMBN: Further with the innovations, has there been anything brought to the table by a SIIM member that has really caught your attention or really excited you?

Geis: I’ve seen so many companies! It starts with one person showing up saying I’ve got this idea or I’ve written this one little piece of software what do you think? And you encourage them and lo and behold, it turns into one of the major players in the imaging IT space. I think you’re going to see at this year’s SIIM those people showing up having actually developed the idea into a true company, albeit very tiny. Now they have more than an idea, they have a company and they’re thinking about all the issues that go along with delivering their product to the public and supporting it.

DMBN: Is there anything that you’d really like to see?

Geis: Well, I guess there are two parts to that answer, when I think of problems that need to be solved. First, there are already IT solutions being used in other industries that I think could be applied to radiology and medical imaging and provide a huge amount of value that you could demonstrate easily. For example, what I call workflow engines, the software that is used for lean processes, that’s applicable to radiology and I think there’s a big need and a huge market for it. I’m seeing people working on moving to the next level of IT services that are again available in other industries to provide true interoperability and more of a service-oriented architecture to delivering the images or transmitting data. But we’re still behind other industries, so we have to take the systems we have now and apply the new technology, it’s a wide open field right now.

In terms of other things, I think decision support is an area where radiologists would benefit. It’s just too hard to keep up with all the literature coming out about the differential diagnosis of a finding and the recommendation for treatment or follow up. So a way to be able to use IT to incorporate that into a radiology report, I see that as a large need that isn’t being met yet.

DMBN: In our February issue, our cover story was about how the future of PACS may be without the “A” that is, the archiving. The argument was things like the EHR, for example, might take over some of the role of PACS. Have you witnessed any of that shift?

I think you’re seeing that happen everywhere. Having said that, it’s not trivial — there are issues with imaging data that are different than other kinds of data. You need to understand the nuances and idiosyncrasies of imaging data and how those files are stored and the metadata that is with each image and how you’re going to deal with those. I agree that we’re seeing the archiving part going into the enterprise and that’s fine as long as it’s being done correctly.

DMBN: What would be your assessment for someone in the industry for five, six, seven years? How crucial is it for them to get updates?

Geis: I think that it’s going to become increasingly important for any radiology group to almost have a dedicated IT radiologist. It’s easy to put in radiology IT, but to be able to compete in this new environment, you have to have optimized, sophisticated IT tools to streamline the whole imaging process and be able to collect data both on your processes and efficiencies but to be able to collect data to show quality. The most dedicated groups in the country are working on this as hard as they can and their IT is going to be a powerful tool in this competitive environment. If I can make my radiologists just 10% more efficient by just being a great IT radiologist, in a 20 person radiology group, I’ve more than paid my way even if I never read a single X-ray.

DMBN: Has there been a high point to date that really sticks out in your mind during your first year as chair?

Geis: There was a period where radiologists became very interested in PACS and IT, but they put in PACS and voice recognition, and then there was a shift in 2005 where radiologists seemed to think, “We have it all, we don’t need to pay attention to IT anymore,” but just in the last year, I’ve seen more than one radiology group come to us at SIIM and these groups have been working as hard they can reading as many films as they can and they’re asking what they can do and how they work to become more productive.

There’s a new interest that wasn’t there two or three years ago. It’s just starting, but as this intense competition arrives, there’s going to be a huge wave of trying to find IT products to make radiology departments or radiologists more efficient and to maintain high quality while ramping up productivity even more. And the cool thing is, I can look at the IT and if someone comes to me and asks about these products — if they really work, I can say “yes there’s stuff out there and more stuff on the way.” And it’s exciting because we’re only starting to use IT in medical imaging and there’s so much more to do.