The Time Has Come for a New AI Ambassador

By Mark Watts

Biomedical professionals may be on the verge of a new key skill tree development. It would be an extension of their known skill set and a welcome ambassador in the imaging ecosystem. The recent moves in the market by Bayer and Guerbet in acquiring AI workflow orchestration or hosting platforms has caused this question to be asked by many in the community. This would mean the contrast injector may become the chosen route for AI deployment and support.

Bayer, Bracco and Guerbet develop, sell and maintain powered contrast injection delivery systems and complimentary or adjacent analytical tools and information. GE HealthCare has more fully entered the injection system market via a very close relationship with Ulrich. 

This omnipresence of their device and software solutions gives them access and visibility into the diagnostic imaging market and buying centers in health systems. Nearly every MRI, Nuc Med/PET-CT and CT scanner has a contrast injector associated with it (approximately 65% of all CT exams involve IV contrast) and every angio/cath lab will have an injection system in it. In the form factor of an injector platform, there are complex, distributed, electromechanical systems that also have matured to include a full suite of capabilities that entail the collection, computation, and transmission of data to and from the scanner, PACS, RIS and other departmental or enterprise systems.

A friend of mine spent years developing the informatics architecture and software tooling for Medrad and Bayer including the incorporation of operating system software stacks, interoperability via DICOM, HL7 and web-services. There is a specific DICOM SR SOP class for injection data. 

Quietly we have seen a software and analytics evolution pattern across each of the major contrast delivery and contrast agent manufacturers – Bayer, Bracco, GE and Guerbet. Each has their own brand of contrast injection/delivery systems, remote service capabilities, their own suite of connected analytic solutions for contrast and radiation analytics or/and optimization, and scanner and imaging IT interoperability and connectivity solutions. Some also distribute or have distributed software applications. They have national scale sales, service and clinical application teams touching nearly every hospital as well. Those service and apps teams are critical for getting any medical innovation into use. They also have strong relationships with departmental admins, radiologists and, because of the smart capabilities of the systems, connections, and relationships with service-line leaders in radiology, cardiology, and nuclear medicine, and often enterprise IT. These are very different capabilities and relationships from those developed and needed when representing contrast agents.

The number of sales reps for contrast agents has decidedly decreased in the last 10-plus years (and contrast doesn’t need a service team). However, those reps have strong relationships with health care system purchasing, GPOs and supply chain. They can and will help influence or at least open the right doors at a health care delivery organization for other teams in their commercial organization. A commercial team that has relationships with purchasing, GPOs, IT, and service-line teams is valuable and something that pure-play, health care IT or software vendors will find difficult to replicate. I am recognizing biomed professionals as key players and owners of crucial relationships for advancing innovation into healthcare operations Software as a Service IT-focused startups do not realize this until way too late in their lifecycle.

Scanner sales teams don’t like to get stuck in long sales cycles/evaluation for software applications that might delay or put at risk a million-dollar scanner sale. Compare that dynamic to a $25,000-$45,000 contrast injector and the add-on value of AI applications can be more easily deployed.

Who can help health care organizations and private practices identify the most appropriate and useful clinical analytical tools and facilitate measurement of utilization and demonstrate ROI. I think biomedical professionals will be given an opportunity to help AI vendors with product processes, management and life-cycle planning. They will help define and refine the market needs and scope, customer fit and value proposition. 

I have developed learning modules for a national continuing education company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We can make this happen together.