Inga T. Lennes, MD, MBA, MPH, senior vice president of Performance Improvement and Service Excellence of the Mass General Physicians Organization, medical director, Ambulatory Services, and director of clinical quality, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, discusses ongoing research on screening techniques for lung cancer.

Some of the most exciting work that's being done in lung screening has to do with the new techniques for volume metric analysis, different artificial intelligence, and deep learning algorithms, says Lennes. The ability of the human eyes to detect small lung nodules is limited. Although radiologists are great in that regard, it’ll be interesting to see how computers can supplement humans by sorting through large volumes of imaging data to detect cancers, she adds.

Lennes has a friend who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is focused on deep learning and models in radiology and screening. She has been told that the future of finding cancers is going to lie in the data. Currently, the magnitude of data that is received from images has only been processed by the human eye. Once artificial intelligence is applied to those data, computers could potentially pinpoint cases of cancer from already existent data, concludes Lennes.

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Dr. Lennes Discusses Ongoing Research on Screening Techniques for Lung Cancer

Inga T. Lennes, MD, MBA, MPH, medical director, Ambulatory Services, director of clinical quality, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, discusses aspects of lung cancer screening.

There are two parts to lung cancer screening: the first part involves getting patients to the clinic and the second involves keeping the patients in screening rotation, says Lennes. Navigation personnel play a large role in ensuring patients follow the intended screening protocols. At Massachusetts General Hospital, access nurses serve as navigators in the Pulmonary Nodule Clinic. Having an access nurse has led to a 100% improvement in adherence to these protocols, she adds.

Additional data show that patients adhere to guideline recommendations for follow-up CT scans about half of the time. When a nurse navigator was added to the staff, the adherence rate surpassed 90%. Having the proper personnel in place to ensure that patients are not receiving duplicate services is another important component of a successful screening program, concludes Lennes.

Inga T. Lennes, MD, MBA, MPH

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Dr. Lennes Discusses Ongoing Research on Screening Techniques for Lung Cancer

Dr. Lennes on Aspects of Lung Cancer Screening