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Siemens Healthineers AG
February 26, 2020
Making the right decisions, patient by patient, day by day is at the core of what every healthcare provider must do. These decisions often have to be made fast, under the pressure of extremely high workload, complex bureaucracy and long working hours.
Quick and easy access to information is critical here, and digitalization can contribute significantly to improving decision-making along the whole patient pathway. With modern and connected healthcare solutions, the complete patient history and previous tests become available anytime to be able to decide on the right next steps.
This kind of data-based clinical decision support is predicted to have substantial impact as we move towards value-based care that focuses on improving outcomes, increasing efficiency and reducing costs.
In the U.S., the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are increasing their emphasis on the use of clinical decision support (CDS) tools, recognizing their role in reducing care costs and improving care quality.
Clinicians who are already using these decision tools report they help significantly in diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making because
- they provide access to relevant patient information
- and to diagnosis-specific order sets.
This information enables adherence to evidence-based guidelines, risk stratification and treatment options. They also report use of the tools can stimulate provider-patient discussions about appropriate care.
We at Siemens Healthineers know that digitalization can make lives of caregivers and patients easier. However, it is neither efficient nor sufficient to add one isolated solution to the other.
Healthcare providers can benefit even more if they use a platform that integrates the global expertise of a reliable partner with healthcare domain ‘know-how’ based on a large, installed base and long-term experience.
The teamplay digital health platform of Siemens Healthineers is designed to act as a scalable backbone giving a kickstart into digitalization, improving operational efficiency and reducing costs by providing the right data at the right time.
Moreover, caregivers become future-ready by getting the chance to apply latest innovations like AI to support decision-making and better care along the entire patient pathway.
Siemens Healthineers offers a variety of products in its portfolio to support clinical experts in diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making. For instance, the AI-Rad Companion*, a family of AI-based reading assistants, supports radiologists in routine tasks.
The semi-automation of these reading processes with repetitive tasks and high case volumes helps to ease the daily workflow, so that experts can focus on more critical issues.
The portfolio also includes magnetic resonance imaging with solutions for analysis and prostate biopsy support. Siemens Healthineers solutions not only help to ease routine activities, but also support decision-making in multidisciplinary teams so they can find the best individual treatment options.
The first application AI-Pathway Companion* is designed for oncology and prostate treatment. Further applications for lung cancer and cardiovascular are currently in development and will follow. The AI-Pathway Companion* applications help to match the data available for the individual patient with the guidelines to identify the possible treatment approach and facilitate the appropriate disease management.
Siemens Healthineers AG
Originally published at https://hbr.org on February 26, 2020.
