Sharing images is a vital part of the diagnostic imaging procedure.
Radiologists and clinicians need to be able to communicate properly in order to
create a proper diagnosis for the patient and in turn give the patient the
proper form of treatment. A good question is, how can images be shared in a
timely manner that helps all patients? In many respects it is very difficult to
make sure that things are done in a quick and also accurate manner.
With tablet pc’s, cell phones, and many other new devices
it’s interesting to see how things pan out. So how exactly does social media
fit into the equation? Can you discuss something with TOUT? Will there be some
way to tweet the findings? While none of that is known for certain one thing
is, facebook may have some input here.
No, there is no app in facebook that invites your friends
online to play a game called “Guess the complex condition.” There is an article
that does talk about the facebook role in the equation. Herman Oosterwijk
recently proposed a use for facebook in terms of sharing images “I would not
reject image sharing via social media as being far-fetched, but rather take it
as a valid option. Before we consider image sharing on Facebook, I want to
describe image sharing use-case scenarios and then look at how we can
accomplish this with different architectures. I'll also list the communication
options and discuss the maturity of these solutions.”
While in the article the propositions are scenarios it does
make sense when you think about it. To have private pages for sharing images
may be useful. The way it was laid out is as follows:
- Point-to-point modality to viewer: A technologist can push certain studies directly from a modality, such as a CT in an emergency room, to a doctor's home for review at his or her DICOM viewer. There is a direct connection from the CT to the physician.
- PACS to viewer: A PACS could be set up to route all stat studies arriving from a modality directly to a physician's workstation. This is similar to the point-to-point modality to viewer push approach, but it offers the advantage of having a copy available at the PACS to be used as an intermediary. If there are multiple modalities that have to share images, the sending can be centralized from a single source, i.e., the PACS router. If a PACS does not support sophisticated routing using rules determined by information in the image header in order to determine what information goes where, one could use an add-on image router that can be provided by several manufacturers.
- PACS worklist: Images are sent to the PACS, and the radiologist has access to the PACS worklist using the PACS workstation. The workflow management features of the PACS can be used to indicate which studies are stat, which ones are being read, etc. This works well if a radiologist only reads from one hospital or multiple institutions that all have the same PACS. The same workflow is used whether the radiologist reads the images locally or accesses the PACS from a remote location.
There
are issues such as connectivity and speed that need to be considered as well. While
this is all extremely complex in practice it’s important to see if it has some
sort of future to it. The fact is that social media plays a major role in most
aspects of daily life. People depend on social media for marketing, keeping in
touch, self expression, networking, and a host of other things.
If
you have any questions about diagnostic imaging procedures please feel free to
give us a call. We here at Clermont Radiology look forward to answering any
questions you may have.
Charla
Hurst
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