Dear PACS Insider,
Structured reporting has been associated with a number of important benefits, such as improved workflow, reduced interreader variability, faster report turnaround times, and better communication between radiologists and clinicians. However, a recent survey conducted by the Italian Society of Medical Radiology found that a number of technical and professional concerns have largely limited its use in daily practice so far.
What else did they find and what can be done to improve adoption of structured reporting? Click here for our coverage of the Italian research, which was published online recently in European Radiology.
A new cloud-based image sharing project is now underway in France. Under the Shared Regional Medical Imaging Services project with the Agence Regional de Santé, image producers across the Île-de-France region, which to date includes around 200 medical centers, will be able to share data even if they already have their own PACS, RIS, or archive. Click here for our report by Frances Rylands-Monk.
Despite the proliferation of standards to facilitate data sharing, many barriers still remain in the way of sharing images between healthcare institutions. Potential technical solutions are within reach, however, and it's time for radiologists in the U.K. to push locally and nationally to get full image sharing functionality in place, noted Dr. Stephen Fenn, a consultant radiologist and radiology lead for IT at Hampshire Hospitals National Health Service Foundation Trust in the U.K., in a new column.
While emerging countries often have limited budgets to support IT infrastructures at local institutions, open-source software can be an effective way to facilitate image interpretation, archiving, and distribution, according to Dr. Osman Ratib of the University Hospital of Geneva. Ratib and his colleagues recently successfully installed an open-source image informatics platform at the main hospital in Bhutan's capital of Thimphu. You can learn all about it by clicking here.
The concept of deconstructed PACS and enterprise clinical management has been driven to a large extent from across the Atlantic in the U.S., due to trends there such as a growing scale of hospital and health provider networks and rapid adoption of electronic medical record software. But deconstructed PACS may also offer some important advantages in Europe, according to Stephen Holloway, principal analyst and company director at Signify Research. In a new column for AuntMinnieEurope.com, Holloway shares how radiologists can benefit from clinical repositories, independent clinical archives, and clinical enterprise content management models.
If you have any tips or suggestions for topics you'd like to see covered in the PACS Community, please feel free to drop me a line.
