Philips Unveils Adaptive Intelligence for Radiology

Royal Philips today introduced Illumeo, a new imaging and informatics technology with adaptive intelligence* that redefines and enhances how radiologists work with medical images. The intelligent software is the first to combine contextual awareness capabilities with advanced data analytics to augment the work of the radiologist. Its built-in intelligence records the radiologists’ preferences and adapts the user interface to assists the clinician by offering tool sets and measurements driven by the understanding of the clinical context. Illumeo aims to enable faster diagnoses, to drive well-informed care decisions and improved patient care. The new technology integrates with existing systems such as Philips IntelliSpace PACS and will eventually extend its workspace efficiency beyond radiology to other domains.
 
One Single View for Most Relevant Case-Related Information
The new Illumeo technology offers a radically new approach to how radiologists will see, seek and share clinical information, enabling them to provide an even more critical contribution to patient care. Through its data analytics engine, the software provides the radiologist with the most relevant case-related information from various sources in one single view. This holistic ‘patient briefing’ includes the patient problem list,** laboratory results, prior radiology reports, imaging orders or scanned documents (such as handwritten referral letters from GPs and referring specialists) obtained from health information systems like the electronic medical record (EMR) or radiology information systems (RIS). It integrates and organizes this data and helps radiologists to bridge the stages of diagnosis to treatment to follow-up, while being able to rely on a current, comprehensive patient picture. 

“As the number of patients and complexity of care continues to increase, the amount of data and information we deal with on a daily basis is overwhelming,” said Dr. Eliot Siegel, professor of diagnostic radiology for the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. “In order to help solve this problem, having solutions that streamline information and provide context to what is most relevant to a specific case is critical. This will provide a more efficient workflow, which is key to enabling quicker, more confident diagnoses.”
 
Anatomy-Aware Enables Smart Images and Data Presentation
Illumeo is also anatomy-aware. Built-in intelligence understands the anatomical context and thus what the radiologist is looking at on the screen. It then automatically suggests the right tool sets (such as tools for easy measurement and analysis of vessels) to help the radiologist focus on the diagnosis.*** Its intelligent clinical semantic labelling engine reads and analyzes image tags and image series descriptions from a variety of vendors and provides automated semantic labelling with meaningful descriptions. It will make it easier and faster to retrieve specific relevant medical images, and manage their display and quantification. Illumeo is adapting to and remembering radiologists’ preferred hanging protocols: the complex process of organizing and displaying medical images for optimal examination, based on many variables such, modality, body part, available comparison images.

With Illumeo, the radiologist can also generate dynamic reports that can include 3D images or image quantifications based on minimal user input. This information integrates with PACS and can be accessed via EMR systems and can be shared as a multidisciplinary patient information dashboard across the hospital enterprises to facilitate collaboration. The report is designed to be shared with colleagues or the referring physicians and supports the transition of radiology into a ‘value-based’ care delivery model.
 
“Radiologists are central in the diagnosis process, with a critical role in definitive diagnostics and improvement of patient care,” said Jeroen Tas, CEO of Connected Care and Health Informatics at Philips. “By supporting clinicians with adaptive intelligence and providing health IT solutions to foster collaboration between multidisciplinary care teams, we aim to extend the power of their clinical expertise.”
 
Illumeo with adaptive intelligence’s main highlights include:
 

• Contextual relevance—provides the radiologist with meaningful patient data via the ‘patient briefing’ and is anatomy-aware, to suggest the right tools based on what the user is looking at.
• Adaptive intelligence—allows for an intelligent, tailored user experience and workflow. It achieves this by recording and reproducing the user’s hanging protocols in a consistent manner.
• Reduced variability—incorporates guidelines built into the system to remind radiologists of best practices and ultimately assist in standardizing care throughout the institution.
• Extensibility—integrates easily within existing systems by leveraging the latest interoperability standards (such as HL7 FHIR, DICOM RESTful web service, etc.), in order to present relevant patient data. It is scalable—meaning the platform will grow with an institution as it evolves.  

 
The new technology will be showcased at the Radiological Society of North America Annual Meeting, taking place Nov. 27 – Dec. 2, in Chicago, Ill.

References:
* Adaptive intelligence is seen as an emerging concept of combining domain specific models and knowledge (e.g. in the field of radiology) and artificial intelligence to create an adaptive and contextual experience, anticipating users and augmenting their work. The current release of Philips Illumeo exhibits the first step into adaptive intelligence.
** Work in progress. Not available for sale in the United States.
*** Anatomy awareness supports launch in context of ‘inspection modes’ enabling quantification on the fly suggesting quantification on the fly when hovering over veins.