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Susan Ascher, MD, FSCBTMR
Co-Director Abdominal Imaging
Medstar Georgetown University Hospital

 

Dear SCBT-MR Members, Fellows and Colleagues,

 

I hope this newsletter finds you in the midst of an enjoyable summer. In my last message, I mentioned that at our Board’s strategic planning meeting in May we boldy embarked on a mission to redefine the focus of the Society for Computed Body Tomography and Magnetic Resonance for the next decade and beyond. Since that message, we conducted a survey to elicit your opinions on a number of questions about SCBT-MR’s focus and what we could be doing better at our annual meeting.

 

 

We were pleased to receive completed surveys from more than half (53 percent) of you; your investment in the Society is palpable, and the Board and I believe that your invaluable feedback is helping us propel the Society into an organization better equipped to serve you, your professional aspirations and the future of body imaging as a whole.

 

At our upcoming October meeting, I look forward to reporting in more detail on how the Board has been using the membership survey results and how they have guided our plans for the Society’s next chapter. We will have exciting news to share with you!  As you know, body imaging is a field that has continued to evolve from the early days of CT and then MRI.  As a professional group, we want to maintain our leadership and expertise in CT and MR, but also more comprehensively embrace additional technologies relevant to body imaging.    We want to be a premier professional society that our members and fellows go to for state-of-the-art body imaging, one where we all have opportunities to learn from each other and promote better patient outcomes.

 

Speaking of learning from each other, if you have not yet registered for the October 19 – 23 annual meeting, there is still time to do so on the 2019 Denver Meeting page. Hope to see you there as I reconnect with colleagues and meet new friends. As always, I welcome your thoughts about SCBT-MR and suggestions for how your experience with our society may be improved, so send me an email HERE if there is anything you think I should know.

 

 

Respectfully,

Susan

Follow me on Twitter @SCBTMRprez

 

 

 

 

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The SCBTMR Education committee is delighted to announce a new initiative to provide a series of webinars. 
Webinars will broadly cover three main areas:

 

1. Learn from the leaders: CT/MR cutting edge techniques

2. Application of technology to case interpretation

3. Faculty and personal development

 

Our kickoff webinar was held September 12th.  We hope you enjoyed it!
 

Lead By Tara Catanzano MD, FSCBTMR and Victoria Chernyak, MD

 

 

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From the


"Time's Up"

This years Diversity Forum made the case for building

 a more welcoming specialty.

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ACR 2019’s Diversity Forum, entitled, “#MeToo Comes to Medicine: Transforming the Culture,” featured a talk by Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, deputy chair of the department of radiation oncology and director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan. The standing-room-only forum centered around the issues of gender inequities, including unconscious biases, gendered expectations of society, and overt discrimination and harassment.

 

Jagsi started the talk by establishing a baseline with the audience: diversity is good. “We know from considerable social scientific research that diversity promotes collective intelligence,” Jagsi said. “When we bring people together who have vastly different backgrounds and experiences, they actually interact in ways that make them more likely to solve problems.” It’s no secret that the medical field is lagging when it comes to diversity — and particularly in radiology, Jagsi said. She began investigating the issue more seriously when she noticed how many more men published than women in the medical field. “There’s something dysfunctional,” she said. “Something is happening that’s preventing women from ever reaching the point where they submit for publications.”

Jagsi’s research led her to discover example after example of this gender inequity. “Women aren’t entering radiology at the same rate as other specialties,” she said. And when they are, they’re getting paid less for doing the same work. Jagsi cited a study that showed a $12,000 discrepancy between male and female doctors even after controlling for productivity, specialty, and many other factors. Women are also disadvantaged in negotiations.1 “Women don’t ask. They don’t negotiate as aggressively as men — and if they do, they’re dinged for doing so.”

Then there are our deeply ingrained notions of gender roles, Jagsi said. She referenced a study in which groups of people were sent a single CV with all of the same information, except that one version had a man’s name at the top and the other a woman’s.2 Both the men and the women said the man’s CV was stronger despite no material differences in the content. “We have to continually be aware of our unconscious biases,” Jagsi said.

“We also have to acknowledge that we’re not playing on a level playing field,” Jagsi said. This is especially the case when it comes to caregiving responsibilities. “Women are far more likely to be responsible for child and elder parent care,” she said. In a study where participants were asked how they handle times when their usual childcare plans fall through (like a snow day or a sick child, for example), 43 percent of the women said they mostly deal with it themselves, versus 12 percent of men.3

During the second half of her talk, Jagsi discussed sexual harassment and the ways in which it disadvantages and disempowers women. She cited a study in which, when asked the question, “In your professional career, have you encountered unwanted sexual comments, attention, or advances by a superior or a colleague?” 30 percent of the women indicated that they had.4 “This is a floor, not a ceiling for the rate of this experience,” Jagsi said. “And this is not without consequence. Sixty percent of those who experienced harassment had perceived negative effect on confidence in themselves as professionals, and nearly half reported that the experience negatively affected their career advancement.”

After publishing her studies, Jagsi heard from women who spoke of their harassment and their reluctance to tell anyone out of fear of being stigmatized or perceived as victims.

“Organizational psychologists have shown us that harassment is more common in historically male-dominated fields like medicine, where big power differentials and hierarchies exist,” Jagsi said. “It’s also problematic when institutions are perceived to tolerate the behavior. So there are a lot of challenges in our current system.”

“The first half of this talk was about gender equity, and the second half is about sexual harassment. And how do those two fit together? They fit together as a vicious cycle,” Jagsi said. Gender inequity creates an environment in which sexual harassment can occur, and sexual harassment then contributes to gender inequity, according to Jagsi. “So we have to break this vicious cycle.”

Jagsi recommended we learn from the social scientific studies that have been done on this issue for the past three decades. “What we have to do is we have to gather data specifically within each of our institutions and each of our specialties, both to inform interventions and to demonstrate that lack of institutional and organizational tolerance for these behaviors,” she said. “The act of gathering data demonstrates that commitment. We have to clarify our policies, because the lowest rates of harassment occur in organizations that proactively develop, disseminate, and enforce sexual harassment policy, and we absolutely have to address interactions with patients and families.”

It’s vital that we focus on equity, Jagsi said, because we have to change the very structures that are supporting harassment. “While we see many positive strides that are being made and we are on the right track, there is more work to be done. Ultimately gender equity has to be promoted through recognition and changes at the institutional level,” Jagsi said. “Having groups like your group here to promote conscious consideration of diversity and provide safe space for discussion of these issues is really important.” Jagsi suggests organizations like ACR share lessons learned and experiences as much as possible.

“We must employ women, promote more women, and integrate women into every level of the organization so we have what scholars have described as a ‘well-integrated, structurally egalitarian workplace in which women and men equally share in power,’” Jagsi said.5 “Time really is up and it’s not just in radiology, it’s across the board in medicine.”

By Cary Coryell, publications specialist, ACR Bulletin

ENDNOTES
1. Jagsi R, Griffith KA, Stewart A, Sambuco D, DeCastro R, Ubel PA. Gender differences in the salaries of physician researchers. JAMA. 2012; 307(22):2410-2417.
2. Steinpreis R, Sanders K, Ritzke D. The impact of gender on the review of the curriculum vitae of job applicants and tenure candidates: A national empirical study. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research. 1999; 41:509-528.
3. Jolly S, Griffith KA, DeCastro R, Stewart A, Ubel P, Jagsi R. Gender differences in time spent on parenting and domestic responsibilities by high-achieving young physician-researchers. Ann Intern Med. 2014; 160(5):344-353.
4. Jagsi R, Griffith KA, Jones R, Perumalswami CR, Ubel P, Stewart A. Sexual harassment and discrimination experiences of academic medical faculty. JAMA. 2016; 315(19):2120-2121.
5. Holland KJ, Cortina LM. When sexism and feminism collide: The sexual harassment of feminist working women. Psychology of Women Quarterly. 2013; 37:2.

 

 

From the


"Innovation Training"
 

A tech innovation incubator inside the radiology department at Massachusetts General Hospital turns physicians into inventors.
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Before Marc D. Succi, MD, joined Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as a radiology resident in July of 2015, he had already secured several patents and launched two startup companies, gaining valuable experience as an inventor and CEO. His entrepreneurial background made him the go-to invention expert at MGH, quickly revealing the hospital’s need for more robust innovation resources.

“I realized a tangible need existed for innovation training, because clinicians want to be innovative, but most don’t have the tools to bring their ideas to fruition,” says Succi.

After observing the struggles of creative physicians who didn’t know how to approach innovation, Succi developed plans for an in-house prototyping lab and entrepreneurship incubator designed to transform ideas into impactful inventions. He founded The Medically Engineered Solutions in Healthcare (MESH™) Incubator at MGH — the first innovation incubator and accompanying curriculum that is known to be integrated into a medical training program, in any specialty.

Building Buy-In

Before Succi could launch the incubator, he needed support from radiology leaders. So in February of 2016, he met with MGH’s radiology residency program directors and then with Radiologist-in-Chief James A. Brink, MD, FACR, to present his vision and business plan.

To outline the opportunity, Succi described how radiologists are well-positioned to drive innovation across the hospital. For this reason, Succi proposed building the invention incubator in the radiology department, where he could provide training, resources, and equipment to help radiologists and other physicians innovate. He envisioned a workshop equipped with prototyping tools, like microprocessors and 3-D printers, coupled with a hands-on curriculum and informational lecture series to empower radiologists and other physicians with the skills to turn their ideas into reality.

Succi explained that MESH would mentor physicians through the early stages of innovation. By the end of the training, participants would be ready to leverage their prototypes and early data to seek outside funding to develop their ideas further. With this educational goal, Succi noted that MESH would be a relatively lean start-up. He requested a five-figure investment to open the incubator and outlined a long-term vision that would get inventions to bedsides in five to 10 years.

While MESH’s profitability would take time, Succi emphasized that it would bring enduring value to the hospital and the profession. “It’s about training the future leaders of medicine to impact patient care and, in the process, branding radiology as the center of innovation, which elevates our value in the healthcare landscape,” Succi says.

Gaining Support

“The idea of enabling non-engineers to use design principles to prototype potential inventions intrigued me,” says Brink. “Certainly, as patents are commercialized, we will earn future royalty revenue but we’re not looking at ROI from that perspective. It’s more important that we provide an outlet for our residents to develop new skills, so they can create tools to improve care.”

With Brink’s backing, Succi received seed funding from the radiology department in July of 2016 to open the MESH Incubator.

Creating a Creative Space

Although hospital leaders were excited about the incubator’s potential, they weren’t sure where to house the innovation workshop. Initially, administrators offered Succi space in a building next to the hospital, but that didn’t support his vision of making innovation more accessible. In a stroke of serendipity, MGH was relocating some radiology offices just as Succi was searching for a space. The move freed up an area adjacent to the reading room, and Brink agreed when Succi suggested that it would be a good location for the incubator.

From there, Succi made a list of the tools and equipment necessary to build out the workshop — including a 3-D printer, computer-aided design software, microprocessors, electrical components, and other prototyping support tools. He also began developing the incubator curriculum.

To start, Succi surveyed radiology residents to assess their baseline understanding of innovation. He discovered that 82 percent of residents weren’t comfortable creating a device prototype, and none of them knew how to write an intellectual property (IP) disclosure.1 So, he built the program around these topics.

Nurturing Innovative Ideas

In late 2016, Succi launched the first of two incubator courses, the Core Invention Design Curriculum (CIDC). This year-long invention mentorship is open to residents, fellows, and attending radiologists, as well as other physicians who have an idea they want to develop.

During the first six months of the CIDC, participants work one-on-one with Succi and MESH leaders in a mentorship format to validate the clinical need for their ideas. To that end, they gather patient feedback and data to define how their inventions could potentially impact patient care. During the second six months, participants prototype and iterate their inventions in the workshop before drafting and submitting IP disclosures.

Teaching Innovation Basics

While the CIDC is geared toward residents and physicians who just need the right space and skills to execute their ideas, not all residents and physicians have specific ideas to engineer. Recognizing this, Succi began developing the second incubator course, called the Core Residency Design Curriculum (CRDC), in late 2017.

The CRDC is designed to proactively educate residents and physicians throughout MGH on the basics of 3-D printing, programming, prototyping, entrepreneurship, writing patents and business plans, and other skills. In this week-long innovation boot camp, participants hear from Succi and other subject matter experts, including the director of the hospital’s Center for Clinical Data Science, who discusses AI and machine learning — important aspects of any contemporary innovation program.

Measuring the Impact

Succi launched the CRDC as a pilot project in August of 2018. The pilot involved three classes with four residents in each class, for a total of 12 students, each of whom rated the course as “extremely effective.”

To further gauge the CRDC’s impact, Succi and the other expert presenters developed pre- and post-course assessment exams to rate students’ understanding of innovation. The scores soared from less than 50 percent to approximately 90 percent — spurring Succi to offer the curriculum to all residents, fellows, and attending physicians at MGH.

Fueling the Conversation

To build awareness around the incubator and keep innovation top of mind, Succi introduced the MESH Innovator Lecture Series. Launched in mid-2017, the quarterly program is “a platform for interesting people talking about innovative things,” he says.

These lectures aren’t limited to radiology. Succi invites speakers from various disciplines and draws attendees from across the hospital and beyond. Generally, Succi focuses on topics and speakers that are “relevant to the modern clinician.” Each lecture draws an average attendance of between 30 and 40 people — including medical students, residents, staff, and even members of the public.

Generating Interest

MESH has become a strong branding and recruiting tool for the hospital, strengthening its reputation for innovation. Incubator participants have already disclosed five patents, and more applications are pending.

An IR who was having trouble stabilizing the radiofrequency ablation probe in patients’ chests developed one of the first patentable devices through the CIDC. After Succi observed several of the clinician’s procedures, the two worked together to design and 3-D print a probe stabilization device, which they tested in several simulations before writing the patent disclosure.

Succi and the clinician are now focused on further developing the technology and licensing the device for industry use. “This is just one example of the innovations we’re working on that will have a direct impact on the delivery of care,” Succi says.

Reinforcing Radiology’s Role

Interest in the CRDC has been so high, in fact, that Succi received another radiology department grant in December of 2018 to fund the purchase of additional 3-D printers and other equipment, enabling the CRDC’s expansion to other specialties throughout the hospital. By the end of 2019, the program will expand further to include clinicians from other institutions.

“We’re even working with other hospitals to help them establish their own incubators, creating a collaborative network for sharing knowledge and resources,” Succi says. “Ultimately, we want to popularize innovation across medical disciplines, while elevating radiology’s position in a quickly-changing landscape of value-based care.”

ENDNOTE
1. Succi MD, Uppot RN, Gee MS, McLoud TC, Brink JA. Medically Engineered Solutions in Health Care: a technology incubator and design-thinking curriculum for radiology trainees. J Am Coll Radiol. 2018;15(6):892-896. Available at bit.ly/JACR_MESH.

 

 

 

Image result for dr. Andrew rosenkrantz

 

Andrew B. Rosenkrantz, MD, FSCBTMR

Section Chief of Abdominal Imaging, NYU

 

 

Dr. Andrew Rosenkrantz, Section Chief of Abdominal Imaging at NYU, joined SCBT-MR in 2010; he attended his first meeting in 2011 where he received the Cum Laude Award a scientific abstract presentation relating to diffusion kurtosis imaging in prostate cancer.  Dr. Rosenkrantz became a Fellow of the society in 2015.

 

 

Dr. Rosenkrantz feels that he has had an incredible experience at the SCBT-MR meetings; “The society provides a wide range of volunteer and service opportunities, and members have enthusiastically taken advantage of these. The committee chairs at SCBT-MR have really empowered their members to lead projects and initiatives, propose new ideas, and work together in support of the society and it provided a tremendous opportunity for networking within the society and being able to make positive contributions”.  Over the years, he has served on the SCBT-MR Communications, Program and Membership Committees.   SCBT-MR is unique, “It’s been impressive to see the level of commitment and passion for the organization from its junior and senior members alike. The structure of the meeting breaks down hierarchies and encourages members to network and collaborate.   The meetings have also done a great job of maintaining a highly diverse program, combining the more conventional scientific content with lively and engaging sessions covering all aspects of careers in radiology, including quality and safety, leadership, informatics, and beyond,” said Andrew.

 

 

He believes that the SCBT-MR meeting stands out for its focus on the latest scientific advances and technical innovations in the field of body imaging. The SCBT-MR meeting captures the most cutting-edge trends and provides attendees with a wealth of knowledge along with new skills and insights.  The scientific sessions in particular have been spectacular, reliably presenting works from leading as well as emerging research groups in body imaging.  These sessions have historically been a “can’t miss” portion of the meeting, and it’s great to see their expansion in the upcoming program.  He likes the focused half-day workshops on timely topics within body imaging (dual-energy CT and rapid MRI in recent years) and said that these are also examples of the unique content received at the meeting.

 

As a prominent figure of SCBT-MR, Dr. Rosenkrantz encourages new members to volunteer and get involved. He especially encourages early-career radiologists to identify and develop their own particular niche and to foster their individual role within a given practice or society. He enjoys working with the junior faculty, being a mentor on projects, as well as collaborating with radiologists at other institutions through virtual/digital teams. He said that there are so many different ways we can all serve and contribute to the specialty based on our unique and varied experiences, insights, and skill sets.  Providing close mentorship on individual projects helps not just for the project at hand, but also in supporting new radiologists in becoming involved in academic radiology in general.

 

 

Dr. Rosenkrantz said that there is not one single formula or recipe to be successful, but rather a lot of pathways towards success. The definition of success will be different for each academic radiologist, and what one radiologists finds rewarding will be different from that of their colleague.  Accordingly, aspiring academic radiologists should be encouraged to chart their own course and not necessarily seek to fulfill external criteria that may not match their own ambitions or goals.  It can be immensely powerful when an academic radiologist identifies an area within the field about which they are passionate and eager to commit their time and energies. He said that currently we are seeing departments, institutions, and specialty societies increasingly recognizing this diversity of interests and career paths, which will overall be of benefit to the field.

 

 

 

SCBT-MR is trying to increase the society's out reach of and involve more members in society information. The communications committee hopes to use social media to create a space where members can stay up to date, and connect on society news. As well as learn from recent research and  members can share and discuss relevant materials.  Follow us, and interact with the various posts. The more interaction on the social media pages, the boarder viewership.

    

 

 

 Chief Editor
Priya Bhosale, MD

 Administrator Editor
Jen Sheehan