Headed into the holiday season, medical specialists are making their "dream" wish lists not just for themselves, but for their practices and patients as well.
Here are the items on two GI specialists' holiday wish lists:
Sharda Rohit, MD. Gastroenterologist at Swedish (Seattle): I am hoping to obtain upgraded scopes and trial new hemostatic clips and powders. I also hope UnitedHealthcare relents in requiring prior authorization prior to endoscopy. And increased access to inpatient capsule endoscopy.
Benjamin Levy III, MD. Gastroenterologist at University of Chicago Medicine: I hope that gastroenterology practices nationally will incorporate artificial intelligence into their endoscopy suites over the next year so that we can use software such as GI Genius to help us detect difficult-to-see flat polyps more easily. This amazing new artificial intelligence technology places a target box on the endoscopy screen (much like you'd see in a movie like Top Gun) as it detects polyps. Having an additional set of computer eyes will improve colonoscopy quality nationally and also help teach our gastroenterology fellows in training.
In addition, I would love for intestinal ultrasound to continue expanding nationally. This is a life changer for inflammatory bowel disease patients because we can now evaluate for disease activity in the clinic without performing a colonoscopy. Intestinal ultrasound can be used in clinic to quantify inflammation in real time; check for complications such as strictures, abscesses and fistulas; and assess how a patient is responding to medication. What's really cool is that intestinal ultrasound can be used in clinic to offer accurate bowel images for ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease patients without drinking a colonoscopy prep solution. This technology can also help evaluate for recurrence after surgery.