VIENNA - AI is already speeding things up behind the scenes, said incoming European Society of Radiology (ESR) President Prof. Mathias Prokop, PhD. in a video interview at ECR 2026. Work that once took months can now be finished in weeks. If similar tools enter radiology workflows, he expects a comparable jump in clinical productivity.
But integration is the real hurdle. Today’s PACS were built for radiologists, not for radiologists working with AI, said Prokop, radiology chair at Radboud University Medical Center (UMC) in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
“We need systems that deeply integrate these opportunities and give us the choice to rely on AI in a safe way,” he said.
The next challenge is governance: How will AI be deployed? How will it be supervised? And how much autonomy should it have in daily workflows? Despite decades of technological progress, Prokop notes that the way radiologists actually work has changed surprisingly little. That may not last.
“We are now at a breaking point,” he said. “The next two to five years will make a big difference.”
Video produced by: Christof G. Pelz | GRAFIFANT Creation | www.grafifant.at | 2026. Homepage portrait photo by Christof G. Pelz.
Our full coverage of ECR 2026 can be found here.
