July 20, 2023
The American College of Radiology® (ACR®) recently submitted comments in response to a Request for Information (RFI) from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) about NIBIB’s 2024-2028 strategic plan. NIBIB sought input on three objectives related to the impact, challenges, and/or opportunities strategic plan framework:

• Continuing to develop innovative, enabling technologies that integrate engineering with the physical and life sciences to advance state-of-the-art tools, solve complex biomedical problems, and drive the bioeconomy.
• Driving interdisciplinary collaboration and advance partnerships with a range of NIBIB communities, including NIH institutes and centers, government agencies, foundations, professional societies, industry, and academia, among others.
• Training the next generation of diverse and interdisciplinary scientists, bioengineers and healthcare providers and promoting the value of research and commercialization that synergizes these communities.

ACR's comments highlighted collaborations with the NIBIB, including in the ACR National Clinical Imaging Research Registry™ (ANCIRR) project. A specific example given from the ANCIRR project was the COVID-19 Imaging Research Registry™ (CIRR), which contributes COVID data to the Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center (MIDRC) with NIBIB funding and support. ACR encouraged NIBIB to continue to seek and develop multi-institutional collaborations such as MIDRC.

ACR also encouraged NIBIB to continue to respond to the field of artificial intelligence with appropriate physician oversight, including its role in healthcare and radiology, as well as in precision health and medicine. ACR highlighted the ACR Data Science Institute®, which developed the ACR AI-LAB®, a toolkit for radiologists to develop algorithms for individual clinical needs and test on multiple data sets to avoid bias.

ACR looks forward to continued collaborations.

For more information, contact Katie Grady, ACR Government Affairs Director.

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