The hospital of the future: emerging trends and technologies – Q&A with Dr. Alan Pitt

Q: You previously touched on the role of teleradiology and telemedicine. How can they help mitigate staff shortages and how do you see them shaping the future of hospital care more broadly?

A: As experienced workers in healthcare are becoming harder to find, we need to figure out how we can put expertise in the hands of less experienced workers to help them make decisions. Virtualization is an enabler of this, because it creates new opportunities for mentorship and education across all experience levels in a hospital system. For example, you could have an experienced neuroradiologist in Phoenix supporting a general radiologist in a smaller satellite location, or you could have an experienced technologist remotely guiding image acquisition by a less experienced peer. All in real time.

More generally, I like to think of it as a ‘healthcare pyramid’, where you have healthcare workers with varying levels of training and education. The person with the most experience in a certain field should only be drawn in when necessary, and that person should empower everyone who has less experience. It may sound obvious because that’s how most industries operate, but in healthcare we tend not to organize ourselves that way. In a large business, you would never ask a CEO to solve a problem from start to finish – you would have others summarize relevant information for them, and then ask the CEO for an opinion or decision. But in healthcare, it’s actually still quite common for a specialist to do a full intake on a patient, even when less experienced colleagues could do part of that work.

So, I think the bigger message here is that we need to start using scarce resources more judiciously in healthcare. It’s really about empowering every healthcare worker to operate at the top of their license, by making the right expertise available to the right person at the right time – and to do that at scale using new technologies.

Q: Speaking of how technology can empower healthcare professionals, how do you see the impact of generative AI on radiology and on healthcare in general?

A: I think its impact is going to be huge; there is going to be a pre- and post-generative-AI world in healthcare. One of the biggest opportunities I see is to bring various sources of patient information together in a meaningful way, to paint a more complete picture of that patient – which is something we have always struggled with in radiology because of how fragmented healthcare is.

Today, we tend to look at diagnostic imaging in a silo. The vast majority of imaging systems sits in its own realm, disconnected from the EMR, lab results, and other patient data. As a radiologist I can tell you what I see in a MR or CT scan, but the more I know about the patient, the better I’ll understand what I’m looking at, and the more value I will be able to provide. That’s where generative AI can support me, by pulling different information sources together, and then generating a list of potential diagnoses and corresponding probabilities for a particular imaging study.

UItimately this will pave the way towards what I like to call ‘ambient intelligence’, where I sit down at my radiology workstation and have access to every bit of information I need at my fingertips. Not only that, but a virtual assistant will also provide me with relevant insights and recommendations. It may say to me: “Dr. Pitt, I have taken a preliminary look at this patient’s images, I’ve also consumed information from the EMR, lab results and other sources, and I’ve found a similar patient who is also 73 years old, with diabetes and heart disease. Based on my analysis I expect to see these and these comorbidities, and this is something I suggest you pay close attention to.”

So you’re going to see increasingly intelligent support systems, but the radiologist will remain in control and accountable, much like the pilot of a plane.

Q: How do you expect to see the role of physicians evolve as a result?

A: First, I think it’s important to realize that automation almost never replaces people. It changes people. Everyone is going to have to figure out: what’s my new job? As physicians we used to be oracles of knowledge. But in the era of AI and instant access to knowledge, my job is no longer just to possess and recall vast amounts of medical knowledge. It is to use that knowledge in a way that positively impacts my patients.

That means we need to be able to truly understand our patients, communicate effectively with other healthcare providers, and work together as a team to provide the best possible care. Our ability to read a patient’s body language, their concerns, and the subtext of what they are saying – these human skills will become even more important.

Medical schools should adapt their training programs accordingly, so that future care providers are equipped to be the best possible partners in healing and treating disease. Traditionally, we have rewarded physicians for IQ rather than emotional intelligence (EQ). But in an AI-enabled future, their EQ will actually become more important than their IQ. By rethinking the traditional approach to medicine and medical education with the latest technologies, we can create a healthcare system that truly puts patients first.

This conversation was edited for flow and clarity.