With all the buzz on AI at RSNA we wanted to cut through some of the hype and learn more about FDA approved AI solutions. One such solution is making news for stroke workflow and the company we spoke with already has over 300 health system installs in the US.

We spoke with Jonathan Mates, Medical Director, Product at Viz.ai about their FDA approved AI technology for stroke. “When we talk about AI and its importance to radiology it’s clear we will have to see how the technology fits into the workflow. Some of the initial hype and fear have settled down and now it’s getting real.”

Viz.ai is focusing on the stroke workflow. There are a lot of steps and a lot people that have to be coordinated with the way traditional healthcare solves problems and that’s going to take a long time to get the patient to the right place, but with stroke, you don’t have time for that process, brain cells are dying, so with this AI they are cutting through the process and delivering that information directly to the person who needs to make the decision, so they can make that decision while that slower process continues to go on.

Workflow cans be complicated and the AI algorithms themselves can be quite complicated, but with the Viz.ai solutions the workflow is simple. The users get an alert on their phone and they open their phone and they have all the information they need to quickly make a decision and then they have an easy communications hub where they can talk to everybody who needs to hear, and they can coordinate for the patient.

From a technical perspective they are taking the images from the CT scanner, processing them and analyzing them, and then using their AI algorithm to find a suspected problem (a large vessel occlusion), and sending a message to all the users on the app (from the cloud) and alerting them on their phones (they also have mobile viewers) so they can see the information they need to make a decision for the patient.