Why The Cloud Can Help Maximise Diagnostic Scan Advances

If ever two developments should go hand-in-hand, it is the growing effectiveness of medical scans in detecting problems and making early diagnosis possible, and the development of the cloud to make this crucial information accessible to all who need it.

This point should never be overlooked, because at a time when developments like AI are enabling diagnostic scans to be more effective than ever before, the capacity to maximise the benefit lies in ensuring that the accessibility to the data is as easy to obtain as possible for those who need to know. Medical cloud storage offers exactly this.

Some of the latest diagnostic developments in the UK alone offer great encouragement. The BBC recently reported on the introduction of AI by West Yorkshire NHS Trust, which will be used to help diagnose conditions like lung cancer and infections faster when examining X-rays.

Speaking to the broadcaster, project lead and consultant radiologist Dr Fahmid Chowdhury said: The real benefit will be once we start using the AI to flag the abnormal reads we will see over time, and the abnormal X-rays will get reported more quickly.”

Needless to say, the benefit of earlier diagnosis can mean an earlier start to treatment, which may make the difference between life and death in cases such as cancer.

However, the capacity of staff to access such information via the cloud means that in circumstances such as a patient moving to a different hospital, essential data like this will be easy to access and not lost through any lack of communication.

Other new developments in the UK include a study co-led by the London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute and published in the Lancet Neurology, which revealed that carrying out heart scans quickly after a stroke patient arrives in hospital improves the chances of establishing the underlying reasons for the episode.

This will not only help the stroke patient at the time, but can aid recovery by enabling future treatment and medication to be tailored towards preventing a recurrence arising from the identified root cause.