Teleradiology as a Foundation for an Enterprise-wide Health Care Delivery System

Abstract

An effective, integrated telemedicine system has been developed that allows (a) teleconsultation between local primary health care providers (primary care physicians and general radiologists) and remote imaging subspecialists and (b) active patient participation related to his or her medical condition and patient education. The initial stage of system development was a traditional teleradiology consultation service between general radiologists and specialists; this established system was expanded to include primary care physicians and patients. The system was developed by using a well-defined process model, resulting in three integrated modules: a patient module, a primary health care provider module, and a specialist module. A middle agent layer enables tailoring and customization of the modules for each specific user type. Implementation by using Java and the Common Object Request Broker Architecture standard facilitates platform independence and interoperability. The system supports (a) teleconsultation between a local primary health care provider and an imaging subspecialist regardless of geographic location and (b) patient education and online scheduling. The developed system can potentially form a foundation for an enterprise-wide health care delivery system. In such a system, the role of radiologist specialists is enhanced from that of a diagnostician to the management of a patient's process of care.

Subspecialized radiological reporting reduces radiology report turnaround time

“…Furthermore, minor hospitals benefited from a decreased RTAT for the body and musculoskeletal subspecializations (Table 5 ). The decreased RTAT may demonstrate a better distribution of workload among all radiologists through the use of teleradiology, in spite of the more centralized and subspecialized multi-center radiology network [ 15 – 17 ].…”

Reversible 3D compression of segmented medical volumes: usability analysis for teleradiology and storage

“…Besides the allocation of this significant amount of storage space in PACS over time, they are also inefficient in data transfer for teleradiology. 37 To overcome these limitations, the structured storage of visualized volume data is necessary. The proposed strategy introduces several advantages compared to the recent attempts, which rely on storing the segmentation parameters instead of segmented data.…”

“…Moreover, storing animations and videos causes unnecessary redundancy due to their large data size in necessary quality levels. Besides the allocation of this significant amount of storage space in PACS over time, they are also inefficient in data transfer for teleradiology . To overcome these limitations, the structured storage of visualized volume data is necessary.…”

Novel Pre- and Postoperative Care Using Telemedicine

“…The surgical specialties have been rapid adopters of telemedicine compared to other medical specialties, such as radiology, pathology, neurology and psychiatry practices (3)(4)(5). The ultimate goal for surgeons and surgical patients utilizing telemedicine is to minimize in-office preoperative time, while maintaining the adequacy and safety of assessing preoperative patient fitness for surgery.…”