The time has come for the profession of radiology to embrace a label it has been furiously trying to beat back for years: commoditization. The battle against those who wield it as a pejorative is not just futile, it's also counterproductive.

The pace of consolidation in the medical imaging industry, which could be accurately described as feverish from 2010 to 2013, has cooled.

The question in the headline is not open-ended and philosophical. It is multiple-choice and strategic, as any given hospital or multi-hospital system now inevitably perceives its contracted radiology practices as occupying ground in one of only three possible capacities.

We’re only halfway through the current calendar year, and already radiology practice in the U.S. has been jolted by not one but two major transactions.

Apple used to push the world to “think different.” Today, the profession of radiology is being driven to think differentiation. And the impetus is issuing not from a single corporation, but rather from myriad market forces—from commoditization to consolidation to, perhaps most pressingly, ever-narrowing profit margins.

Through the exceptionally tight partnership of vRad Chief Medical Officer, Ben Strong, MD, and Chief Information Officer, Shannon Werb—explored in Part I of this interview—vRad has achieved a synergistic melding of those concepts that truly are driving clinical innovation, as evidenced by the discussion with Strong and Werb.

Speech recognition software is at the top of the wish list, if not in the active purchasing plans, for 272 healthcare providers shopping for or in the process of buying imaging IT products in eight countries of northern Europe. 

Mid-Atlantic Imaging Centers, which serves as the imaging provider for more than 70 physicians within Norfolk, Va.-based Mid-Atlantic Women’s Care, is going with Viztek for PACS.