U. of Florida Health, Nuance Partner on Integration of AI into Radiology Workflow

May 2, 2023

Using AI tools to make radiologists’ work more precise and efficient is the goal of the academic-industry collaboration

University of Florida Health researchers are working with Nuance Communications Inc., which specializes in radiology voice recognition and artificial intelligence deployment, to optimize radiology workflow and deploy AI tools using Nuance’s Precision Imaging Network.

Reza Forghani, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of radiology and artificial intelligence in the UF College of Medicine and vice chair of AI, said the collaboration also should lead to the development of enhanced radiologic voice recognition tools.

“We intend to accelerate development of solutions that enable seamless integration of AI into clinical practice,” he said in a statement. “Those improvements will provide higher quality, cost-effective processes for improving patient care.”

Combining voice recognition technology with AI is one way to improve the accuracy and efficiency of radiology reports, Forghani said, and significantly reduce the time it takes to produce them. That means radiologists could spend less time on reports and more on other patient-related matters, he said. Using AI to produce radiology reports more efficiently should help to deliver crucial information to patients’ primary physicians in a timelier manner. In the future, AI also could be used to track recommendations to ensure patient safety and appropriate follow-up care, Forghani said.

An AI-based system’s ability to gather important text and data that is spread across voluminous documents and reports helps both patients and radiologists, said Patrick Tighe, M.D., an anesthesiology professor and associate dean for AI application and implementation in the UF College of Medicine.

“Radiologists are under more and more pressure to interpret progressively complex medical images with increasingly sick patients. By streamlining the reporting, a system like this helps them focus on the most rarified and special parts of what they do — focusing on diagnosing the patient’s medical condition,” Tighe said in a statement.

Nuance’s Precision Imaging Network is a patient-centered diagnostic imaging platform that delivers AI-generated patient information into the full array of clinical and administrative workflows.