Health Care Systems, Medical Imaging / 06.08.2025
Leading Through Uncertainty: How Radiology Practices Can Thrive in a Disrupted Healthcare Landscape
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Photo by Anna Shvets[/caption]
In today’s healthcare environment, change is the only constant. From technological advancements and workforce shortages to shifting policies and financial pressures, radiology practices face disruption at every turn. But within these challenges lie powerful opportunities. The radiology groups that will thrive in this new era are not the ones trying to return to “business as usual,” but those that lead with agility, clarity, and purpose. Navigating uncertainty requires more than clinical excellence—it demands vision, resilience, and a deep understanding of the communities being served. For groups like The Radiology Group, which focuses on rural healthcare delivery, the path forward is about staying grounded in values while embracing innovation.
Photo by Anna Shvets[/caption]
In today’s healthcare environment, change is the only constant. From technological advancements and workforce shortages to shifting policies and financial pressures, radiology practices face disruption at every turn. But within these challenges lie powerful opportunities. The radiology groups that will thrive in this new era are not the ones trying to return to “business as usual,” but those that lead with agility, clarity, and purpose. Navigating uncertainty requires more than clinical excellence—it demands vision, resilience, and a deep understanding of the communities being served. For groups like The Radiology Group, which focuses on rural healthcare delivery, the path forward is about staying grounded in values while embracing innovation.
Response: Point-of-care ultrasound is one of the most significant advances in bedside patient care, and its use is expanding across nearly all fields of medicine. In order to best prepare medical students for residency and beyond, it is imperative to begin POCUS training as early as possible. At the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, we introduced POCUS education over a decade ago and have expanded it since then.
By providing each student with a Butterfly iQ device, we can augment our curriculum significantly. In addition to our robust pre-clinical sessions, now we will expand into the clinical years highlighting the utility of POCUS with actual patients.
This gift was made possible by the incredible generosity of Dr. Ronald Salvitti, MD ’63. 
Dr, Ferguson[/caption]
Michael Ferguson, PhD
Instructor in Neurology | Harvard Medical School
Lecturer on Neurospirituality | Harvard Divinity School
Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Over 80% of the global population consider themselves religious with even more identifying as spiritual, but the neural substrates of spirituality and religiosity remain unresolved.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? Where is this circuit located in the brain? What other effects does this circuit control or influence?
Response: We found that brain lesions associated with self-reported spirituality map to a human brain circuit centered on the periaqueductal grey.
Dr. Spampinato[/caption]
Maria Vittoria Spampinato, MD
Neuroradiology Division Director
Department of Radiology and Radiological Science
Medical University of South Carolina
Charleston, SC 29425-3230
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) represents a major public health crisis worldwide. More than 5 million people currently have AD in the United States. AD is a slowly progressing neurodegenerative brain disorder with a long preclinical phase. Many people with AD first suffer from mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a decline in cognitive abilities like memory and thinking skills that is greater than that associated with normal aging. A person with MCI is at an increased risk of developing AD or another dementia, although some individuals with MCI remain cognitively stable or improve.
Anxiety is frequently observed in individuals with MCI. The reported prevalence of anxiety in MCI patients varies between 10 and 50%. In this study we evaluated a cohort of 339 individuals with MCI participating in the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative study (ADNI2). During the five years of study participation, 72 patients experienced cognitive decline and were diagnosed with AD. We did not find difference in age, gender and education among patients with and without AD conversion. Patients who progressed had greater atrophy of the hippocampi and entorhinal cortex on their MRI scan, as expected (hippocampal atrophy is often used as a marker of neurodegeneration in AD), as well as greater prevalence of APOE4 is the strongest known genetic risk factor for AD. Patients who progressed to Alzheimer’s disease also had greater severity of anxiety during the study, as measured using the Neuropsychiatric Inventory-Questionnaire. Next we determined the effect of the MRI findings (hippocampal and entorhinal cortex atrophy), of the genetic risk factor (APOE4) and of the severity of anxiety on the time to progression to AD. We found that higher levels of anxiety were associated with faster progression from MCI to AD, independently of whether they had a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease or brain volume loss. We still need to understand better the association between anxiety disorders and cognitive decline. We do not know whether increased levels of anxiety are a consequence of cognitive decline or if anxiety exacerbates to cognitive decline. If we were able to find in the future that anxiety is actually contributing to cognitive decline, then we should more aggressively screen for anxiety disorders in the elderly population. 
Dr. Kooraki[/caption]
Soheil Kooraki MSR MS, MD
on behalf of Dr. Ali Gholamrezanezhad MD and co-authors
Department of Radiological Sciences,
David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: COVID19 is a novel strain of the coronavirus family causing pneumonia. Two similar strains were discovered in 2003 and 2012 to cause the so-called SARS and MERS outbreaks, respectively. Radiologists need to be prepared for the escalating incidence of COVID-19. We reviewed the literature to extract the epidemiologic and imaging features of SARS and MERS in comparison with known imaging features of COVID-19 pneumonia to have a better understanding of the imaging features of the COVID19 pneumonia in acute and post-recovery stages.
