Dear PACS Insider,
The impetus to purchase the first commercial teleradiology system -- a camera-on-a-stick device capturing "freeze-frame" video images transmitted by ordinary telephone lines -- was to provide emergency care where it did not exist in rural outposts in the northernmost reaches of Canada's province of Ontario. This was in 1980, and so it's gratifying to learn that teleradiology systems are still being deployed for this purpose.
Attendees at the recent KIS-RIS-PACS and DICOM meeting held near Mainz, Germany, were briefed about TKmed, which has added teleradiology capabilities to its large national trauma network. Read more in this article.
The second impetus for the adoption of teleradiology was to provide after-hours coverage. There's been a lot of concern over the years about just how accurate teleradiology services can be, so it's reassuring to read about the outcome of a study conducted by University College Hospital in London. Click here to read senior editor Erik L. Ridley's report.
The use of teleradiology as an e-learning application has evolved with the maturation of the technology. In Greece, this is getting positive reviews, as reported from the Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS) congress in Pisa, Italy, by associate editor Frances Rylands-Monk.
For those of you in the PACS Digital Community who didn't attend EuroPACS in Pisa, we offer an update about how one vendor is investigating a new way to operate a diagnostic workstation: through the use of gesture devices. Read about it here.
Another change afoot is the increasing use of vendor-neutral archives in PACS. Exactly how should they be defined? Market analyst Theo Ahadome offers some ideas in this article.
Also of interest is a project under way that uses autoanalysis of clinical documents for patient recruitment into clinical studies. It was reported on at the Mainz conference. Learn what's happening by clicking here.
Do you have an interesting project under way using teleradiology or PACS technologies? We'd be delighted to share your experiences with our readers. Please feel free to send an email to me, and let's talk about it.
Enjoy the summer!
