Les Folio, DO, MPH

What is your current imaging informaticist role?
I started as a senior member radiologist at Moffitt Cancer Center, where informatics is pivotal to our profession. As a pioneer of interactive multimedia reporting, I co-chair the HIMSS-SIIM workgroup expanding this revolutionary capability to other image-centric medical specialties.

What do you love most about imaging informatics?
How rewarding it is to apply something that comes naturally to me that results in solutions implemented on a wide scale.

If you could choose anyone as a mentor, who would you choose?
Edwin Land, inventor of polarized lenses and one-step photography (Polaroid Land camera). I believe his quotes say it all, e.g., “Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible” & “anything worth doing is worth doing in excess.”

What one thing, either industry-related or not, did you learn in the last month?
That augmented intelligence (human driven AI workflow) is nearing 90% identification & quantification of metastatic tumors in cancer patients.

What’s the last book you read or TV series you binged?
“Deep Medicine,” by Eric Topol, eloquently describes how AI will empower (not replace) physicians while revolutionizing patient care.

People love the networking at SIIM. Do you have a networking/mentor/volunteer story?
An example of where the mentor learns more from the mentee happened to me at the SIIM21 Hackathon. Radiologist fellow at MGH, Dr. Pedro Staziaki, led the winning team Pokerad that applied gamification incentives to radiology resident learning modules while providing quality labels that enhance machine learning data.