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Moving Toward Seamless Interinstitutional Electronic Image Transfer

2022; Elsevier BV; Volume: 19; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.jacr.2022.02.039

1558-349X

Bibb Allen, Safwan S. Halabi,

Radiology practices and education

There is universal agreement that the retirement of medical image transfer via compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROMs) and other physical media is long overdue, especially in a world where it is almost impossible to purchase a new computer with a CD-ROM reader. It is embarrassing that medicine’s most technologically advanced specialty continues to rely on antiquated technology like CD-ROMs and facsimile machines to transfer information essential to radiology workflow and patient care. Despite the efforts of radiology’s leading specialty society initiatives such as Image Share and #DitchtheDisk, the response from industry leaders and the overall diagnostic imaging market has been slow to adopt modern image-sharing standards and interoperability. Leading technology companies are beginning to facilitate electronic image transfer, and although solutions supporting their customer base are being used, they have not been broadly adopted because different institutions use different vendors, data transfer protocols are not standardized and are sometimes proprietary, and there are no regulatory mandates to facilitate adoption. Furthermore, image transfer from imaging facilities to physicians’ offices is limited because most independent physician practices do not have the capacity to store outside imaging of their patients and often require their patients to keep their images on CD-ROMs rather than store them in the physician office as part of the office electronic health record. Moving Toward Seamless Interinstitutional Electronic Image TransferJournal of the American College of RadiologyVol. 19Issue 3PreviewThe fact that medical images are still predominately exchanged between institutions via physical media is unacceptable in the era of value-driven health care. Although better solutions are technically possible, problems of coordination and market dynamics may be inhibiting progress more than technical factors. We provide a macrosystem analysis of the problem of interinstitutional medical image exchange and propose a strategy for nudging the market toward a patient-friendly solution. The system can be viewed as a network, with autonomous nodes interconnected by links through which information is exchanged. Full-Text PDF