Interview with Sectra CEO: new partnership with GE and RSNA highlights

Is this opening your mind up to other opportunities where you might cross competitive lines?

Yes. We don’t compete with Epic, but we have very deep integration with their programs. We want to integrate with other vendors as well. Not all are open to it yet, though, but we think they will be in the future. No one accepts a closed environment nowadays. No customer wants to be forced to buy something. They want freedom, and that’s what we are aiming for.

Could you talk about why you and GE are initially focusing on cardiology and the heavy demands of that clinical workflow environment?

We just started and are showcasing it at RSNA. It’s a big space, and one where users often step over to CT workstations or open other applications because they need some special measurement. So, it’s a good place for us to start and then add more applications later on. We’ve done the interface, and now we just need to fill in other applications. It will be much easier than doing the first one.

What’s next? Are there plans for other clinical environments with GE?

Yes, we will work together on other applications. We started out with cardiology and will eventually add more specialties in the future. That’s the intent of us and GE. But we will listen in on what customers think at RSNA and, based on that feedback, decide on the next step.

Could you talk a little about the increasing subspecialization in radiology and the demand it’s placing on the profession?

Sam Gambhir was a professor of diagnostics at Stanford University. He once told me that the typical doubling time of all medical knowledge in 1950 was 50 years. So, in 50 years, the amount of medical knowledge needed for clinical practice in the world doubled. And then in 2000, it was 15 years; in 2005, it was 10 years; and now the doubling time of medical knowledge in the world is about 90 days. That’s an awful lot to put on someone’s shoulders, right? You can’t keep all of that in one head, and that leads to an increasing subspecialization across all areas of medicine. A surgeon today is not just a surgeon. He’s an upper-gastro or knee expert. So, that increases the demand for collaborative environments where you can discuss images and consult with specialists in a certain field.

Why is combating these challenges and addressing the shortage in radiology a top priority now?

It’s a major driving force. If you ask a U.S. hospital leader today what their main pain point is, very often they will say “getting people.” Even though you pay doctors a lot of money, they also want to see their kids at least a little bit during the week. A lot of U.S. doctors are on the very verge of burnout, or they’re not happy with life. I saw a survey that said 49% of U.S. physicians are considering going to another job, despite potentially earning much less pay. In such an environment, you have to help doctors out. Otherwise, there will be no one left to care for patients. So, we need efficiency. We are concentrating completely at RSNA on workflows and doing things with fewer clicks. We count the number of mouse miles doctors do per day, and we strive to minimize it.

What else are you showcasing at RSNA?

We are focused on integrated diagnostics, running pathology, radiology, and all of these image types on one single workstation with one single back-end. That saves a lot of money for hospitals as well. Instead of 15 different IT environments, you can have one for all images.

Also, we will showcase added functionality for workflow, driven by AI. Most PACS vendors have their own AI offerings. We said “no” to this. Instead, Sectra runs an app store because there are 1,000 startups in AI with very smart and very well-funded teams. You can’t compare with them. The big companies think they can, but you can’t. We said from the beginning, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” So, we have a completely open attitude called Amplifier, where we can vet AI apps for cybersecurity purposes and allow them to control the workflows.

We will also be showcasing what we call a “one throat to choke cloud.” Most vendors say they can deploy in the cloud, but you end up having to buy the service yourself from someone else. Then you end up with the worst nightmare for a radiologist or hospital: It’s their fault, not mine. We at Sectra take full responsibility. We use the public cloud and top contractor and take full responsibility for the customer. They don’t have to buy the cloud separately. We include all of it in our service and our price. It’s always our fault. If it doesn’t work, it’s our fault, which is an attitude that people like a lot. We can’t blame anyone else because it’s always on us.

What other trends are you watching at RSNA?

Integrated diagnostics is important. Having pathology and radiology in the same workflow. Tumor boards are super expensive things. They are thousand-dollar-a-minute meetings. So, we do a lot of integrated diagnostics, where users can view both pathology and radiology in the same workstation and tumor boards can have common reports between the two specialties, integrated all into one oncology report for instance.

Any new challenges that you’re focused on going into 2024?

As part of the integrated diagnostics theme, we’re beginning to do genomics, which is something that was requested by the University of Pennsylvania, one of Sectra’s radiology and pathology customers. They wanted us to help them with the workflow environment and tightly integrate genomics into the digital pathology workstation. This way, tumor boards can have radiology, pathology, and genomics all on the same display, facilitating more efficient workflows. We are shipping the first version in January, so that’s for the next year.

Are you looking forward to the RSNA?

It’s my 34th in a row, except for COVID, so I’ve been many times. I always look forward to it as an opportunity to see customers and what’s cooking in the field. The first one I attended was in 1989. There were maybe two computer monitors at the entire show, and one was us. The rest was film, film, film, film, film. It’s quite different these days. I also like time with customers. We need to get that ground truth from them. I hear from a lot of customers myself, but it’s always through a filter, right? At RSNA we can see the customers directly face-to-face and get the truth, which is super important for keeping quality up.

Watch the interview in its entirety here:  https://radiologybusiness.com/topics/healthcare-management/leadership/sectra-ceo-discusses-new-partnership-ge-and-whats-tap-rsna