Good morning all,
The traditional annual reflection back into the world of imaging informatics is coming a little late this year so apologies to those who have already taken down their tree and lights!
Firstly, and probably the most noticeably, as we moved further away from the pandemic years 2024 brought more changes in the forwards march of home working, particularly for several areas in the reduction of office space for reporting staff. On-premise roles for clerks, MDT co-ordinators and the teams providing frontline clerical support to Radiology and other healthcare services were also affected in others. Unifying and supporting these remote positions seems to be split between I.T. and PACS Teams so far with no clear āeasiest optionā for support (and the initial deployment) being identified as yet.
Many imaging departments also report sustained high levels of Radiological acquisitions over the past 12 months. This along with the associated reporting and processing requirements have stretched capacities and required suppliers to join with their customers to develop ingenious solutions to extending systems capabilities and lifespans whilst keeping them safe and patient focused.
AI has remained a topic at the forefront of the profession too, with tens of millions in new central funding provided for trials, projects and start-ups. This year however saw concerns develop around Adversarial AI and Errors in Generative AI bringing into focus the possible need to have a new type of suitably trained and experienced staff to āoverseeā or validate AI decision making in healthcare situations. Somewhat a paradoxical situation when AI was originally believed to reduce workload.
For Radiographers, the new HCPC requirements touching on knowledge of AI and aspects of āmachine deep learningā effectively introduced the topics to a wider but previously less interested audience quite positively.
Security and data integrity issues cropped up across the country throughout 2024 too, with multiple healthcare organisations suffering cyberattacks and the resultant disruption to patient services. These along with the emerging risks of cloud storage appear to be areas 2025 will see more necessary development and activity in.
The professional groups year has been productive - the BIR AI & Innovations SIG continues to organise regular AI knowledge and showcase events, the SCoR Radiology Informatics Advisory Group examined the issues of Radiological Equipment Donation abroad in a digital age and the RCR RIG SIG looked at refreshing guidance on Radiological Record Retention Periods plus provided a primer of (PACS) re-procurement tips collated by frontline staff.
For the training front, the various levels of vendor neutral non-profit informatics / HL7+DICOM training sessions continue to have been attended by hundreds of Radiographers across the UK and internationally this year - the 10,000th UK attendee having attended one of the dates around UKIO in the summer. For this milestone I am personally greatly thankful to those who continue to give their encouragement and time to help out with material, providing regional updates or speaking across the various sessions. The few who tackled the Advanced level, the many who took assessments in the Intermediate HL7+DICOM or began by attending the Fundamentals of Radiology I.T. sessions running over almost every weekend throughout the year also deserve special mention, as do the AV and streaming teams who keep the technology and training labs online throughout. 2025 will bring a special announcement for one particular region in the UK as specially requested focussed training sessions are introduced to meet their needs in a more personalised way.
For myself, the 7-years-in-the-making new reference book āClarkās Complete Imaging Informaticsā is moving forward into the final stages of production for release later in 2025 (which will be a tremendous relief to complete!), hopefully benefiting those who require more in-depth coverage of informatics topics. For those looking to enter the profession or at other healthcare texts, Routledge have issued a 20% discount valid between 6th-23rd January 2025 for any of their works (click through pacsbook.com and see the discount at checkout once any books have been added to the basket - not just for Radiology texts).
With this, as always from the forum, thank you to everyone for the interesting discussions and participation in the continued development of the community over the last year. The volunteer moderators, Rhidian and myself wish everyone a very Happy New Year 2025, even if this is a bit later than usual this year!
Take care all, and hopefully see you about in 2025!
Alex.
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