Strategic Radiology Partners with Ferrum Health to Standardize Validation and Management of Clinical AI across its Members

Strategic Radiology, the nation’s largest coalition of independent, wholly physician-owned private radiology practices in the United States, has chosen Ferrum Health to support and accelerate the discovery, validation, and management of clinical AI across its member institutions. In response to the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) across all imaging modalities and the explosion of FDA clearances over the past several years, Strategic Radiology’s adoption of the Ferrum Health platform ensures that its members have a secure, standardized, and cost-effective way to enable member groups to continue to lead in both clinical technology adoption and quality of care. Strategic Radiology will use Ferrum to monitor for algorithm performance, bias, and drift across its practices, as well as to share learnings on clinical impact and business ROI of the 50+ algorithms available on the Ferrum platform.

One of the top concerns the partnership will seek to address is the emerging recognition amongst radiologists that many AI tools available on the market are insufficiently validated and run the risk of being biased. Ferrum Health will work with Strategic Radiology members to provide a standardized method of sharing AI performance across demographics, allowing for Strategic Radiology to uncover AI blind spots putting patients at risk that may not be visible to individual practices without Ferrum. In addition, Ferrum is working with Strategic Radiology practices to quantify and share the ROI they are seeing from the AI tools they pilot. These insights will be presented and shared among Strategic Radiology members to further accelerate AI adoption as the healthcare industry emerges from the financial pressures placed on it by COVID-19.

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Within Strategic Radiology, early adopters like ARA Health Specialists, Asheville, NC, and The Hill Medical Corporation, Pasadena, CA, have been using Ferrum Health over the past several quarters, validating and deploying AI applications across diverse workflows that includes oncologic, cardiovascular, and orthopedic indications. “AI is a priority for our membership and will fundamentally transform how radiology is practiced, but comes with clinical, technical, and business risks,” said Scott Bundy, MD, FACR, Chair and CEO, Strategic Radiology. “SR needs to support our members and has chosen Ferrum to help them navigate these challenges. What made Ferrum’s platform stand out is that it is privately deployable into member’s existing data centers and clouds and it features robust validation and monitoring tools to build trust with our members.”

In addition to providing technical and business support to Strategic Radiology’s members as they adopt clinical AI, Strategic Radiology and Ferrum Health will allow their members to share data and insights on AI performance with a partnership between their respective Patient Safety Organizations. This partnership will ensure that the data and insights into algorithm performance being generated by the AI tools on the Ferrum platform will remain protected and non-discoverable under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 while giving Strategic Radiology members a confidential and legally protected forum in which to exchange case studies and best practices to improve quality and patient safety.

“We founded Ferrum Health with the mission of making intelligent health care accessible to all, and I am beyond excited about the passion and enthusiasm Strategic Radiology’s leadership and its members have for improving patient care,” said Pelu Tran, CEO of Ferrum Health. “We’ve spent years building up a best-in-class library of clinical AI partner applications from all over the world, and we can’t wait for these tools to start improving the care of the millions of patients served by Strategic Radiology’s radiologists every year.”

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