July 20, 2016 — During the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) 2016 general closing session, James J. Morrison, M.D., of Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) was named the winner of the $10,000 Innovation Challenge prize for his project, “Voice Enabling the Image Enterprise.”
Morrison and his OHSU team — Jonathan Steinberger, M.D.; Steven Kassakian, M.D.; and Eric Leung, Ph.D. candidate — were one of four finalists who demonstrated their projects in the Science and Innovation Pavilion throughout the annual meeting, and then gave final pitch presentations to a panel of judges representing the fields of clinical medicine, informatics, business and finance.
Morrison’s project addresses the inefficiencies of using standard keyboard and mouse interfaces, which he states “results in delays while accessing information, and underutilizes readily available patient data.” Morrison used an Amazon Echo to elucidate the possibility of automating electronic health record data extraction, radiology reference mining, inventory queries, patient scheduling and result reporting through a voice interaction platform. Commercial solutions have opened a doorway into the voice-enabled world, and Morrison’s idea would build upon this foundation by utilizing software developer kits and standardized application-programming interfaces augmented for use in medical imaging.
The SIIM Innovation Challenge provides a $10,000 prize to support innovation, exploration and development of solutions that will help shape the present and future of imaging informatics. Ideas for software, apps, hardware or other informatics technologies that solve a particular challenge in imaging informatics were submitted.
Morrison will use the $10,000 prize money to obtain additional hardware for development and testing. The award money will also allow for purchasing dedicated server space, domain registration and a SSL certificate. Once these are in place, Morrison and team will deploy the system in an active academic radiology environment for testing.
The OHSU team will present their progress to the SIIM Board of Directors and the 2017 Innovation Challenge Committee in six months, and also report back on the project at the SIIM 2017 Annual Meeting, June 1-3, 2017, in Pittsburgh.
For more information: www.siim.org
May 04, 2026 
