AI helps doctors in one of the largest hospitals in Romania

Timișoara County Hospital is one of the largest and most advanced medical institutions in Western Romania, accounting for a large flow of interregional patients. On a daily basis, thousands of patients are coming to this medical institution, and several hundred of them reach the medical imaging department. This department is analyzing an increasingly large number of medical images, especially X-rays and CTs, and almost 50% of x-rays made are chest X-rays.

When it comes to radiology, we can observe a constantly growing gap between the total number of medical images that are required on an annual basis and the number of available radiologists. The medical imaging field is rapidly developing and cross-sectional images like CTs and MRIs are increasingly in demand. Even so, the number of radiologists trained to report these medical images have been stagnating in the last years. According to a study conducted by the Royal College of Radiologists in 2016, Romania has on average, 10 radiologists for every 100.000 people, while in countries like Greece the average number is 31.

RAYSCAPE, previously known as XVision, was founded in Timisoara at the beginning of 2019 by a multidisciplinary team willing to have a real impact on healthcare. We have always tried to be surrounded by people willing to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies and that’s why we have first approached the hospital from our home county. The coincidence was that in the same year they also received the title of the ”Best Romanian Hospital” within the „Romanian Healthcare Awards” competition.

Until the begging of 2020, SJCUT was only using medical software dedicated to better visualization of the medical images, a PACS system, and a DICOM viewer like most of the hospitals from our home country. Even so, when we first approached them to integrate Rayscape within the hospital, they saw immediately the opportunity and the potential benefits for the doctors.

Rayscape is integrated into Timisoara County Hospital for more than two and a half years, and the doctors have started to use it and integrate it into their workflow since the beginning of the collaboration. The program gradually gained their trust and now more than 80% of the medical images made within the hospital are analyzed with Rayscape. Doctor Marius Benta and doctor Cristina Rasadean are two of the radiologists who have constantly helped us with feedback.

We have been using it since its prototyping phase – we’re more than satisfied with the development and effort that the team has put into the product. Constant feedback sessions, training sessions with our staff, and prompt solutions to technical issues make my colleagues strongly suggest Rayscape to any hospital that has similar challenges to ours. -Dr. Marius Benta

Rayscape is designed to help with this – both the CTs and x-rays detection algorithms provide our doctors with help in screening, triaging, and analyzing patients. It reduces turnaround time and removes mundane work. -Dr. Cristina Rasadean

Rayscape & COVID19 pandemic

At the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic situation in Romania, the number of chest X-rays has been rapidly increasing. The number of patients requiring medical investigation was growing from one day to another. Even so, the number of radiologists was the same and they were put under more pressure than ever. Rayscape helped them in sorting and prioritizing the X-rays. We have integrated within the platform a triage score, and each image receives a score from 1 to 3 based on the gravity of the pathologies detected. Thus, the doctors were able to prioritize the patients with a more urgent clinical condition. Moreover, we have developed a COVID19 score able to detected the pathologies correlated with SARS-CoV2 infection, helping them to triage even faster the patients possible infected.

We rely on Rayscape as a digital assistant. Even the number of chest x-rays has fluctuated during the pandemic, we get used to the help provided by this software and we have integrated it into our daily workflow. It was very important to us at the beginning of the COVID19 healthcare crisis to know that we can take advantage of this emerging technology. – Dr. Marius Benta

Timisoara County Hospital can provide now better care to their patients and better work conditions for their employees. By integrating AI into their workflow, doctors are now able to analyze faster and more efficiently the medical images.

Like Timisoara County Hospital, it’s mandatory for hospitals & healthcare organizations to take advantage of these technologies. Artificial Intelligence helps doctors fare better at their everyday tasks.