“The issues are more about people than about technology.”

Dr. Langlotz outlines the 3 C’s that define a good report: clarity, concision, and consistency (especially with medical terminology). Dr. Davis adds a fourth attribute: that the best reports directly answer the specific clinical question. She thinks about this function in light of the reality that many patients are now gaining access to their radiology reports through EHRs, to which Dr. Langlotz mentions:

“Patients will have a higher standard for their reports than even referring clinicians do.”

He discusses that radiology efforts should ultimately focus on producing a single report accessible to clinicians and patients alike, a substantial task that NLP may facilitate. In an era where it is sometimes claimed that AI will replace radiologists, Dr. Langlotz sees the immediate role of AI as taking on radiologists’ more repetitive tasks, such as measuring lesions. As AI becomes more sophisticated and moves toward detection tasks, it will improve radiologists’ productivity.

Tune in to hear these insights and more on how radiology reports will interact with the larger healthcare ecosystem in the future.