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Aidoc Staff

How Better Systems Can Support Faster Diagnoses

System Integration, Workflow
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Healthcare has spent decades improving patient safety, yet diagnostic delays and errors affect hundreds of thousands of patients each year.

More than a decade ago, the National Academy of Medicine identified diagnostic error as a major patient safety concern. Since then, research from organizations including Johns Hopkins Medicine continue to highlight the harm diagnostic errors cause. A study published in BMJ Quality & Safety estimated that roughly 900,000 Americans are seriously harmed, permanently disabled, or die each year because of diagnostic delays and errors. 

Given those stakes, healthcare leaders and researchers are placing greater focus on improving diagnosis. Publications in BMJ, among others, have argued that improving diagnosis must be a patient safety priority.

Yet despite advances in medicine, many patients still don’t receive the right diagnosis at the right time.

The question is why.

When Great Clinicians Work Within Complex Systems

Healthcare employs some of the most skilled professionals in the world. Yet clinicians are working in an environment that is increasingly difficult to navigate.

Clinicians are expected to make fast yet confident decisions using data from many sources. Imaging studies, lab results, physician notes, and specialist consultations can all influence a diagnosis, yet those insights are often spread across teams and systems.

The challenge is not a lack of clinical expertise. As Aidoc CEO Elad Walach has noted, healthcare has no shortage of talented clinicians. The challenge is that the system itself is stretched beyond capacity. 

Improving Diagnostic Safety Requires Better Systems

Improving diagnosis depends on systems that can help clinicians reach the right people before time is lost. 

Consider a patient showing signs of stroke. Identifying the stroke is critical, but diagnosis alone does not improve outcomes. The information must reach the right care team quickly. Time is brain, and delayed intervention can impact the patient’s outcome. Across healthcare, improved patient outcomes depend on how effectively information moves through the system.

Following a discussion with Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Tom Mihaljevic, healthcare executive Eric Larsen echoed that healthcare’s biggest challenges are often system-related. Patient outcomes can depend on how organizations operate and move information from point to point.

Clinical AI as an Additional Layer of Support

Clinical AI can help clinicians manage growing volumes of information. These systems can flag time-sensitive findings and draw attention to data and information that requires immediate action.

Clinical AI can also alert care teams to patients with suspected acute findings before a radiologist confirms and notifies them. Fast notifications with relevant data like these can help expedite treatment and lead to better patient outcomes.

As healthcare generates more data, helping clinicians access the right information at the right time won’t be optional. 

Elad Walach has argued that clinical AI should eventually become as commonplace in healthcare as seatbelts are in cars. Seatbelts became standard because they reduce risk and improve safety. Clinical AI has the potential to do the same by helping care teams identify and respond to information sooner.

A Leadership Opportunity

Improving diagnostic safety requires healthcare leaders to examine how information moves through their organizations.

The ones that make the greatest progress will be those that focus on helping critical information reach the right people faster. Healthcare already has the clinical expertise needed to improve diagnosis. The opportunity now is to build systems that help that expertise reach more patients, with less delay.

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Aidoc Staff

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