Radiology reporting on the GE Healthcare Centricity RIS just got smarter with an intelligent algorithm that senses when dictated cases don't sound right. This "thought checker," scheduled to begin routine shipment by the end of this year as an upgrade to the Centricity RIS-IC Reporting module, uses the context of reports to identify possible errors. The program, for example, might question whether the radiologist meant "left occipital lobe" rather than "right" by highlighting the directional term in blue. Or it might insert a red bar at a point where certain information needs to be added.

"It understands the concept of left and right and the need for certain measurements," said Michael Mast, GE senior manager of commercial marketing in the imaging integrated IT business unit. "It serves as an extra check in that it gives the radiologist a chance to clarify some points in a report."

GE showcased the advanced speech capability, and the partnership with M*Modal that made it possible, at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) meeting. The new partner's AnyModal Conversational Documentation Services combines speech recognition and natural language to interpret the meaning of dictated reports and then identify possible errors. Among the other features included in the M*Modal technology are rules-based multiorganizational scheduling, patient and image tracking, multiple diagnostic reporting options, and outcome monitoring. An integrated mammography administration module further extends clinical utility.

GE is framing the availability of this new technology as accelerating the adoption of structured reporting in radiology by making automation a trusted part of the reporting workflow. M*Modal's technology first transforms spoken dictation into a draft report, then structures and encodes the recognized speech into a document format chosen by the user.

"The radiologist can send it to draft, to transcription, or to signature cue, based on [his or her] confidence in the report," Mast said.