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What’s Happening at SIIM 2016

The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) will hold its annual meeting at the end of this month in Portland, Oregon. As in years past, educational sessions at the conference will be as diverse as the field itself.

The show kicks off on June 29 with an opening session (8:30-9:30 AM) titled “The Race for the Care — Leveraging Innovation to Drive Patient Centered Care,” which will be presented by Rasu B. Shrestha, MD, MBA, chief innovation officer at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and executive vice president of UPMC Enterprises. According to information provided by SIIM, the session will focus on the changes and challenges that face radiology today and how those in the field must adapt to “enable the very basic elements of patient-centered care: the free flow of data, a team approach to care, better communication, and care that is personal and empathic.”

The closing session on July 1 (3-4:30 PM) will be presented by Eliot L. Siegel, MD, FSIIM, a professor of radiology at University of Maryland School of Medicine and chief of imaging services at VA Maryland Health Care System. The session, “Peering Into the Future Through the Looking Glass of Artificial Intelligence,” will “address current state of the art in computed aided detection/diagnosis and evaluate what must be done in order to reinvent the way in which they are integrated and executed,” according to information provided by SIIM.

In addition to the closing session, artificial intelligence and its role in radiology will also be discussed earlier in the day (7-8 AM) on July 1 at a roundtable called “The State of Artificial Intelligence in Imaging.”

For those interested in incorporating vendor-neutral archives (VNAs) into their practice, SIIM will feature two sessions, both on June 30. First, at 9:45 AM, a panel discussion, “VNA Opportunities and Issues,” is scheduled to feature representatives from Laitek, Inc; Fujifilm Medical Systems USA, Inc; Candelis; Merge Healthcare; Dicom Systems, Inc; and GE Healthcare. The session will focus on “industry perspective on VNAs’ value, unresolved issues, what users should consider when determining how to integrate VNAs into their enterprise imaging informatics ecosystem, and how SIIM and other organizations can assist in further defining rules about medical image capture, archival and interoperability.” Later in the day, at 4:15 PM, an educational session titled “Financial Analytics — What's Your VNA 'Really' Going to Cost You?” will highlight hidden costs of VNAs and how the technology can demonstrate its value.

Other noteworthy sessions scheduled for this year’s meeting include “Performance Innovation — Don’t Let Good Be the Enemy of Great” (June 29, 9:45-10:45 AM), “Social Media Opportunities in Radiology Practice” (June 30, 7-8 AM), “Analytics in Healthcare — How Do You Need to Think About Your Data?” (June 30, 4:15-5:15 PM), and “Taking Back Control of Our Pacemakers and OnStar Vehicles” (June 30, 8-9:30 AM).

For a complete listing of all events scheduled for SIIM 2016, visit http://www.siim.org/page/16program_schedule.

— Radiology Today staff report