Notes/thoughts on a few products:

Ferriscan - being the gold the standard investigation for liver iron concentration, including serum ferritin, is particularly impressive which allows for clinical and research applications, and eliminates need for liver biopsies. Added to major clinical guidelines. There is a huge prevalence of iron overload diseases in Africa and Asia, which only accounts for a small portion of the company’s clients.

HepaFat-AI - Given the very high prevalence of fatty liver disease across the world, this is very interesting product. Demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity in comparative study with liver biopsy. Can be deployed in the cloud or on premises and can be integrated directly into existing radiology workflows. Will likely have increasing clinical relevance (currently probably limited) as direct treatments for NASH and NAFLD are becoming available. These conditions are also areas of high research and drug development due to the high prevelance. 

ALERT-PE – Awaiting clinical validation. Late-stage.

 A few queries on this product:

-       I query the usefulness of this product given that I don’t think many PE’s are missed by radiologists, especially clinically significant ones, and they can readily be seen on CT immediately after the scan is completed. 

-       Are we as a medical community ready for the diagnosis of PE, a potentially life-threatening condition, to be diagnosed by a computer without review by a radiologist?

-       Would I treat PE based on a computer’s diagnosis? If it is big PE with severe signs and symptoms it should get treated without a scan anyway. 

-       The company states “Alert-PE should deliver improvements in the areas of radiology workflow, processing time, read performance and risk management.” I would like to know a more about how exactly this would occur.