3 ms·
Stuff like this shows the gulf between research and clinical practice. I'm doing a PhD in medical imaging, and we have carte blanche to run whatever we want. We
by irremediable 11y ago
Stuff like this shows the gulf between research and clinical practice. I'm doing a PhD in medical imaging, and we have carte blanche to run whatever we want. We generate a lot of amazing visualisations.
But almost all hospitals are stuck running out-of-date software that wasn't even good when it was released.
- phodo 11y agoHow does a healthcare system or private clinic acquire such software? What is the solution? Are the bottlenecks monetary, political, access?
- irremediable 11y agoGood questions, and I don't claim to fully know the answers. Some such software is released open-source, e.g. NifTK, FSL, MedINRIA. Some is spun out and then sold through vendors as a service, e.g. Siemens, icoMetrix, many others. Why aren't things used more? I'd say the main bottlenecks are monetary, political and cultural. Doctors are often set in their ways, and hospital management staff are risk-averse. Moreover, because of legal liability issues, a lot of this stuff has not been formally approved for clinical use -- so hospitals won't touch it. This is especially true of the open-source software. Getting approved is an expensive and time-consuming process. Service contracts with approved software are expensive, mostly as a result of this. Heck, look at the struggle involved in digital patient records, which is supposedly a simpler problem than imaging. In the UK, we've spent billions on that without getting anything usable. There are uniquely bad political reasons for that, but it's illustrative nonetheless.