Two decades ago, Shez Partovi was working as a neuroradiologist at the US private hospital chain Dignity Health in Arizona, and remembers listening to a lecture by a nun between seeing his VIP patients from Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Sister Margaret was talking about children with diabetes on Native American reservations just 50 miles from the private hospital, who had little or no access to medical care.
Partovi, now chief innovation and strategy officer at the Dutch healthcare company Philips, recalls: “She said: ‘I want you to remember there are people that are born, live and die never having seen a physician, and your job is to know that.’”
It made him think: “Is that the rest of my career, to see four patients a day? How do I scale whatever impact I want to have?”
He enjoyed working with patients – he still dreams about angiography, a type of X-ray used to check blood vessels. “My wife thinks I’m nuts, but it helps me … I am grounded in both the patient impact and the physician plight.” But ultimately he wanted a job where he could reach more people.
So Partovi, who has postgraduate qualifications in computer science, became chief digital officer at Dignity, where he worked for 20 years, and then moved to Seattle to run Amazon Web Services’ global business development for healthcare, life sciences, genomics and medical devices. Fast forward, and the Iranian-born Canadian has been working at Philips in Amsterdam for the last four years, overseeing development of MRI and CT scanners, and image-guided therapy that uses light instead of X-rays to navigate blood vessels, all powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
AI-enabled scanners and other devices will benefit patients, as well as clinicians, bringing relief to overstretched health systems such as the NHS, he argues, speaking via video link from a European radiology congress in Vienna.
“The AI [in MRI scanners] is smart, speedy, precise; it scans three times faster. Everywhere in the world, and the NHS is no exception, the waiting times for patients are such because the throughput is so limited. So when you scan faster with the same or better resolution, you improve throughput and patients don’t wait as long.”
A shortage of NHS radiographers has sometimes led to MRI scanners standing idle – at a time when NHS waiting lists for diagnostics and treatments remain high. The average vacancy rate in radiography is 15% and two out of three radiographers have experienced burnout due to regular overtime, according to the Society of Radiographers.
Partovi says repetitive and administrative tasks will be performed increasingly by AI computer algorithms, speeding up diagnostics and other procedures. “In the UK in particular, technology can help deliver better care for more people in terms of time, quality and reliability, and it also brings the joy of medicine back to radiographers and radiologists.”
Philips, which started out as a lightbulb manufacturer in 1891 and later moved into televisions, radios, cassette and video players, compact discs, electric razors and toothbrushes, has turned itself into a major healthcare technology company in recent years.
It specialises in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, ultrasound, personal health and home monitoring – for example for cardiac arrhythmia. It invented a helium-free MRI machine five years ago (helium is used to cool down other scanners), which is cheaper to construct, lighter and can be loaded on to a truck and taken to remote places.
A new MRI scanner starts at around £1m, including AI systems, with helium-free models cheaper to install and run, but more expensive upfront. CT scanners cost from £500,000 to £1m-plus.
Partovi recounts how scanning the brain has changed since he started working as a neuroradiologist in 1996 – from taking and interpreting 24 images, to 2,400 when he stopped practising in 2013, and now up to 5,000. AI helps clinicians spot anomalies in seconds, as well as summarising past findings.
“If a radiologist is looking at a chest CT for lung cancer, they can find the lesions 26% faster because AI tags them,” he says. “The same study [by Philips] found 29% of lesions the radiologist didn’t even see.”
Other independent research has shown similar benefits for AI technology. Computer algorithms were better at spotting breast cancer in scans than doctors in one study, and the NHS could soon start to use the technology to evaluate X-rays of broken bones. Last week, UK researchers said that an AI tool could detect two-thirds of epilepsy brain lesions that doctors tend to miss.
Partovi is adamant that, however advanced, the technology will never replace doctors. “So, do I think physicians are going to be out of a job? Not at all. Do I think some things that doctors do will be automated by AI? Yes.”
Working with Imperial College Healthcare NHS trust in London, Philips has trialled a system that allows expert radiologists to remotely control scans and help technologists carry them out. The pilot speeded up scanning times of the heart, allowing 9% more patients to be screened, and reduced recall rates to zero.
The AI-powered software has just been approved by the EU, and also works with scanners produced by rivals such as Germany’s Siemens and GE Healthcare in the US.
Another product, LumiGuide, described by Philips as a “3D human GPS powered by light”, is in use by the NHS at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospital in London, allowing doctors to navigate through blood vessels using light instead of X-rays. It paves the way for radiation-free, less invasive, surgery, such as complex aortic repairs.
The Amsterdam-based company, which employs nearly 68,000 people globally, made sales of €18bn last year, although fourth-quarter revenues, up by 1% to €5bn, missed analysts’ expectations. Annual profit before tax fell to €115m from €123m. Sales in China plummeted, amid lower consumer spending, changes in regulation and anti-corruption measures.
Philips is also paying out $1.1bn in settlements for certain ventilators and respiratory care devices in the US that had to be recalled because of potential health risks. Worldwide, 15m devices are affected.
Despite these setbacks, Partovi predicts “tectonic shifts in healthcare” due to AI technology, which is also set to revolutionise telemedicine and remote monitoring of patients, helping to reduce pressure on health systems. “It’s just a great time to be in medicine. It really is.”
He did his own medical training at McGill University in Montreal after ending up in Canada, having moved around a lot as a child. He started his career as a neuroradiologist at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, and later helped launch the biomedical informatics department at Arizona State University and taught there as a clinical professor for three years.
In between, he founded five startups: four healthcare tech firms that were acquired and one other – not in health – that was a “complete failure”. They taught him to stick to his strengths, and how to build teams that work – something you do not really learn in medical school, he says.
He loves living in Amsterdam, which is “like a mash-up of my two favourite cities in the world: Vancouver and Montreal. Vancouver has the outdoor life, cycling, boating, parks, cloud and rain. And Montreal has an amazing old-world charm with the cobblestone streets of Old Montreal.”
CV
Age 58
Family Married with one son and two daughters.
Education Computer science and medicine at McGill University; Barrow Neurological Institute; University of British Columbia.
Last holiday “A brief getaway to Istanbul with my wife.”
Best advice he’s been given “Be stubborn on the vision, but flexible on the details.”
Biggest regret “One cannot live in the world of regret; reflect on experiences, assimilate the wisdom, and grow.”
Phrase he overuses “If it works, double down; if it doesn’t, shut it down.”
How he relaxes Street photography.
