Ahead in the Cloud: Imaging Cloud Applications and Ideas

The data-intensive nature of radiology has long kept the specialty on the cutting edge of IT. That’s why cloud computing is a relatively old concept among imaging-informatics veterans.

While the term might be showing signs of wear, its applications are just getting started. Teleradiology and other...

Idea in Search of a Business Model: Solving the Image-sharing Dilemma

The deftness of data movement between sites creates a deception that it’s easy; it’s not. Leaving aside technical problems with integration, servers, and storage, the more central problem might be this: Who pays the bill to set image exchange in motion?

In the case of...

Cloud-based Image-sharing Solution Gives On-demand Access to Images

Streamlining interaction between imaging departments and referring clinicians not only saves time, lives, and duplicate studies, but can also improve productivity. One of the most powerful new approaches to eliminating the physical and networking barriers to image sharing is the use of cloud computing.

At the 2011 annual...

Rex Healthcare: Taking the Logical Next Step in Image Exchange

As someone who has found himself—more than once—in a mad dash to catch the day’s last FedEx® pickup so that an out-of-town physician could have a patient’s images stat, Tom Hasley sees the wisdom of a cloud-based solution to image delivery. Hasley is systems support...

RSNA Image Share Network Enrolls First Patients

Patients are at the center of control in an ongoing effort by the RSNA to standardize the way that medical images are shared on the Internet. In August 2011, The RSNA Image Share Network started enrolling its first patients to have images and reports stored electronically, through an online network...

XDS-I: Blueprint for Image Exchange

In 2005, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) published the Cross-enterprise Document Sharing for Imaging (XDS-I) integration profile, extending the capabilities of XDS by incorporating DICOM instances and providing a blueprint for image exchange among disparate institutions. Nonetheless, the will remained weak through the latter half of the decade when it...

CDs: Migration Is Worth the Effort

However daunting the concept might appear, migration to image sharing via Web portal or the cloud is seemingly well worth the effort, given the disadvantages of other options, such as paper printouts, film, and CDs. David S. Mendelson, MD, is chief of clinical informatics and director of radiology information...

Image Sharing:The Cloud, the Roadmap, and the Business Models

Image sharing yields an impressive host of benefits. Patient care improves with timely physician access to images, and there are much-needed efficiency gains when examinations repeated due to the inability to access prior images are eliminated. While specifications for image exchange have surfaced in the past decade, few projects...