Innovation in Radiology, Trending Now?
2Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
3Internal Medicine B, Assuta Medical Center, Ashdod, Israel and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
4Deepvision Lab, Sheba Medical Center, Israel
Background and Purpose: The healthcare system is an extremely complex industry and may benefit from the adaptation of technological innovations. Radiology has often been the portal for medical advancements. We aimed to reveal the engagement of innovation in the radiological literature compared to the general medical literature.
Materials and Methods: We have queried the PubMed API for all available innovation-related entries published during 2000-2020. Papers were classified into research fields that comply with innovation: artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and telemedicine. Terms to classify entries into the three research fields were determined in consensus by the authors. Journal list of radiology and nuclear medicine and other medical fields was compiled using the open access Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) site.
Results: Our search yielded 194,685 innovation-related results published during 2000-2020. Most digital technology innovation-related publications were written in the last decade. AI research had a sharp rise in all fields of healthcare with 20,552 publications in 2020 compared to only 2,184 publication in VR and 5,189 in telemedicine. In 2020, 2603 (38.7%) of the innovation publications were published in radiology and nuclear medicine related journals vs. 1426 (21.2%) surgery, 1294 (19.2%) oncology and 566 (8.4%) internal medicine related journals.
Conclusion: Radiology and nuclear medicine were at the top of innovation related publications with a sharp rise at the last years. While AI is at the main focus of radiology and nuclear medicine literature, VR and telemedicine had a limited number of publications. Innovation employment may help with the ever-growing workload and improve performance. Hence, understanding of innovation engagement in different medical fields is of paramount importance.