Building the 5%: Realizing Tangible Enterprise Value At The Intersection of Generative AI and Radiology
A recent study by MIT found that only 5% of AI pilots provided tangible value to organizations. Undoubtedly, however, utility emerges in many forms, and in the world of radiology, generative AI’s presence and value has become overwhelmingly obvious. Specifically, its role in automating and easing documentation workflows is unprecedented.
In radiology, mere minutes matter. When minutes are scaled across thousands of studies in a given enterprise, they compound to massive outputs resulting in smaller backlogs, capabilities for increased reading capacity, more efficient procedure turn-around times, better revenue opportunities for systems, and ultimately, improved value and outcomes for patients.
In a recently published case study, it was found that LucidHealth’s adoption of Rad AI’s platform resulted in a 11% boost in RVU productivity per shift, a 6% reduction in CT exam turnaround time, and most importantly, significant time savings for repetitive tasks, resulting in more bandwidth for core clinical duties.
Experiences like these indicate that clinician leaders and health system executives should likely undertake an extremely targeted approach with their enterprise AI and digital transformation programs. Rather than approaching enterprise strategies with a “boil-the-ocean” methodology, projects involving radiology should aim to solve immediate issues with proven technology surrounding documentation drafting, structured summaries, and enabling effective means to engage in follow up.
Why? Because these are measurable arenas where both user demand and acceptance of innovation is high, cutting-edge tools are already available to promote immediate progress, and adoption and integration is straightforward. Each deployment in this context should be executed with a key goal in mind: are users seeing a difference post-adoption versus pre-adoption. If yes, then value has indeed been realized.
When numerous smaller improvements are brought together, the cumulative value is often larger than the sum of the individual pieces; ultimately, these drive enterprise success through less stressed workflows, reduced clinician attrition, and an overall improved clinical and workforce strategy in an incredibly stressed physician labor market.
The desire for immediate perfection can often be an unrealistic enemy of progress for enterprise investments. Instead, progress that is reliably delivered in the right parts of the workflow, along with high user adoption, great customer support by a vendor, and seamless integration into existing workflows should take precedence in a rapidly evolving technology landscape.
