08 Sep RSNA Enrolls First RSNA Image Share Patients

imagingBiz | The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) has enrolled the first patients in RSNA Image Share, its project to develop a network for the sharing of medical images among patients and physicians.

Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, New York, is the first of five pilot sites participating in RSNA Image Share to begin accepting patients. Patients will subsequently be enrolled at the other four pilot sites—Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; the University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California; the University of Chicago Medical Center; Chicago, Illinois; and the University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland.

At each site, patients will be educated on establishing, with health care providers, personal health record (PHR) accounts that will enable them to retrieve, view, archive, and share medical images, reports, and other documents. RSNA believes the project will facilitate access to medical images and reports, which has the potential to decrease the volume of unnecessary exams, reduce patient radiation exposure, and enable more informed medical decisions.

Launched in 2009 with a $4.7 million contract with the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), RSNA Image Share is based on the XDS.I.b profile of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE®), an initiative among medical leaders, software developers, societies and vendors to improve communication between healthcare equipment, systems, and software.

The initial objective in developing RSNA Image Share was to build a secure medical imaging network based on common open-standards architecture that will enable patients to control access to their information through PHRs without relying on CDs. The overall goal is to move closer to a universal electronic health record (EHR) and help physicians meet federal Meaningful Use requirements in practice.

The participation of health care equipment and software developers is essential to widespread adoption of image sharing, says Keith J. Dreyer, D.O., Ph.D., vice chair of radiology informatics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts and an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School.

“RSNA has done a great job of defining the standards for companies to cooperate and move images,” asserts Dreyer, who serves on the RSNA Radiology Informatics Committee.

To promote widespread adoption, image sharing systems are now being made available to the public, Dreyer adds. He claims the project has created a green field for vendors who are interested in offering their services to the industry in a standardized manner.

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