Patients today have become active agents of their own health. Their changing attitudes and behavior towards how they perceive and address their well-being or illnesses have changed since the year 2020. Taking an active role, they prefer to track their own health and use the data gathered to make informed decisions before visiting a doctor.
To serve the objective of preventive care, the measures of early detection and diagnosis have sought greater attention from the healthcare sector today. It has managed to alter healthcare by lowering costs, improving the quality of care, and delivering timely treatment.
However, despite its benefits, there are still existing pitfalls that require attention. When researchers investigated the concern, they found an existing gap within the medical imaging reports that did not align with the patient’s needs satisfactorily. As a result, it often leads to medical errors and poor clinical decision-making.
Addressing the matter, Vital Radiology has evolved as one of the medical imaging solution providers with an existing global position in the market. Having been founded in 2016, the company is led by a team of qualified medical professionals who work together to deliver high-quality reporting services in order to support clinical radiology. Until today, it has performed over 500,000 scans worldwide annually.
Dr Arun Chauhan, the Founder of Vital Radiology, had a keen eye for the patient’s needs, based on which he runs the company. He ensures optimum transparency in the company’s clinical governance and leads the operations base while keeping a patient-centric view in mind.
Below are the details of the Interview.
Arun, please brief our audience about Vital Radiology and kindly tell us the source of inspiration for venturing into the medical imaging niche.
Vital Radiology is a leading provider of teleradiology services. We work across the globe and provide high-quality definitive reports around the clock. My source of inspiration recognized the problems that exist within medical imaging and how they impact health outcomes globally. There is a huge backlog and bottleneck as pictures are continuously taken, but there are very few people who can actually read and report. Even when the scan is done, the report doesn’t come for a long time, which causes a delay in treatment.
By background, I am a clinician, and so I am keenly aware of the importance and value of diagnostics and early diagnosis especially. This is a global problem, not just a UK problem, and if we want to improve the quality of care across the globe, it is hugely important that we diagnose diseases as early as possible.
It was my recognition of this problem and my desire to provide a solution that could accelerate the diagnostics and diagnosis process and therefore provide better care to the public which acted as my inspiration to venture into the medical imaging niche.
Brief us about yourself and shed some light on your journey in the organization.
I qualified as a GP and then I moved to technologies, so my profile is a combination of healthcare and IT.
When I began working in teleradiology, I saw that there was a lot of inefficiency in the system, and I could see that this was due to technology not being used optimally. I started on a small scale and have increasingly worked towards a global view of the market and its problems, and then began to think about a solution that could influence global issues.
I started Vital Radiology and got together a very good team in the UK and India, and in the last year, we partnered with I-MED Radiology, which is one of the largest radiology companies in the world. Since then, we have been in heavy expansion mode.
Being the founder of Vital Radiology, I’ve gained a lot of insight into the market, and it’s been a very interesting journey. It gives me a lot of satisfaction, especially knowing that the work we do helps people.
Can you elaborate upon the core values on which Vital Radiology is built and its mission?
We have four core values on which our organization is built; these are as follows:
- Transparency: We aim to be transparent in everything we do, providing clear information and feedback to stakeholders and customers.
- Efficiency: Delivering efficient solutions to the medical sector through improved workflows and dashboard analytics.
- Quality: Improving and sustaining a quality reporting platform through regulated checks and balances is paramount.
- Reliability: Creating and sustaining reliable integrations provides reporting inside time parameters and visibility and presence when we are needed.
Our mission is to bring together the best people dedicated to providing and developing a world-class innovative digital healthcare service positively impacting patient care and pathways.
Kindly elaborate upon the services that make Vital Radiology stand out from the competition.
Vital Radiology stands out in three main ways.
Firstly, our platform integrates into NHS systems, which means they provide the full context of patients’ history and prior images; therefore, we give the full picture of the patient.
Secondly, our technology is unique: we have a unique dashboard that is designed specifically for the needs of NHS trusts and provides full visibility on cases. We also have an automated workflow management technology that reduces manual input and administrative tasks.
Finally, we recruit only the best radiologists, and because we have teams in Australia and India, we are able to provide reports around the clock.
What is your opinion on healthcare providers’ aligning their offerings with newer technological developments, especially when it comes to catering to the dynamic needs of the healthcare space?
Healthcare and technology work hand in hand, so I value healthcare providers’ aligning their offerings with newer technological developments very highly. Technology brings a lot of quality into healthcare. This is the key focus that we have at Vital Radiology. All the technology we use improves efficiency, outcomes, and quality.
However, it is not there to replace doctors or radiologists it is there to improve efficiency, quality, and outcomes. Nor is artificial intelligence there to replace human intelligence but to complement it.
“My idea of using AI in diagnostics is not to replace consultants but to improve efficiency in operations.”
Organizations that are at the forefront of using technology in their service provisions are going to be leading the healthcare space going forward.
What advice would you like to give to the budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the medical imaging niche that you are catering to?
We should all chase our dreams, whatever sector we are working in.
“I think for those working in medical imaging, it’s important to remember that the images we are looking at are not just an image, they are an image of an individual, a human being.”
This perspective is important because it reminds you that you are the person responsible for improving someone’s health outcomes, and when you start thinking at this level, then you see that you are helping to build a healthier society and a healthier world essentially. Also, when we talk about imaging, it is always going to be a technology-driven business, so the mindset needs to be, “How best can I use technology to deliver imaging services?”
How do you envision scaling Vital Radiology’s services and operations in 2022 and beyond?
We have the intention of expanding geographically beyond the 7 countries that we currently cater to. We plan to expand to new continents such Africa, Europe and Asia. We also have the intention of developing different types of services, for example, specialist services, such as lung and heart screening programs, specialist cancer reporting services, and nuclear medicine. This will involve bringing in lots of new specialist radiologists, and we are building a team to meet these needs.