BOSTON, MA – It sure was a spooky day to get an MRI scan. But for patients who visited Shields Health in Dedham on Halloween, the trip was less frightening than normal.
That’s because Shields and partner Tufts Medicine had just installed a new GE Healthcare machine equipped with artificial intelligence, and used it with a patient for the first time Thursday. The result? A routine scan took 12 minutes instead of 22. That’s good news for patients, particularly those who get anxious as time passes in the MRI tube. It’s also good for Shields and its MRI center partners, because they can see more patients on any given day. So far, Shields Health chief executive Tom Shields has installed AI at about one-third of his chain’s 37 MRI locations.
The Quincy-based company’s adoption of AI started long before ChatGPT’s emergence. Assistant medical director Tiron Pechet returned from an industry conference in 2019, informing Shields that AI would have a profound impact on the industry by reducing scan times and increasing image clarity. Shields figured it made sense to get on board. (Insurance reimbursements typically remain the same, regardless of whether the MRI scans are AI-enabled.)
So far, he estimates Shields Health has invested $25 million in this AI rollout, which began in 2020 with GE Healthcare software in Framingham; Shields said it was the first such installation in the world. Shields expects to convert all of his sites — which use machines from GE Healthcare, Siemens Healthineers, or Philips Healthcare — within the next five years, by installing new machines or installing AI software on existing ones.
“We’ve never seen this happen, with the reduction in scan times and the increase in quality,” Shields said. “The real winner in all of this is really the patient.”
Read the article on The Boston Globe – HERE