I-Corps: Integrating Patient Facial Photographs with Medical Imaging Studies

根据医学研究所1999年的报告《人皆有错》，估计美国每年有近10万人死于医疗差错。据估计，在全国范围内，由于放射学中的错误患者错误而导致的严重不良事件的数量约为每年10，000起，其中一名患者的医学成像研究被放置在另一名患者的文件夹中。这种错误可能会对两个相关患者造成严重伤害。联合委员会已认识到这是一个严重问题，并规定在提供任何医疗服务时都必须采用双重身份识别技术。尽管有这种双重标识符的要求，错误的病人错误继续发生在放射科。 拟议的创新是一项新技术，可在每次医学成像研究的同时自动捕获患者照片。这项技术可以成为一种强大的附加识别工具，并有助于防止成像检查的错误标记，从而减少医疗错误。此外，数字照片可能会导致改善医学成像检查的诊断解释，而不会对解释时间产生不利影响。所提出的技术是基于自动和无缝地获得护理点的患者面部照片沿着每一个医学成像研究。这些照片将作为唯一的、内在的、外部可见的患者标识符，并将嵌入医学成像研究中。当解释放射科医生和医生查看医学图像时，照片也会自动显示在图像存档和通信系统（PACS）工作站的单独窗口中。因此，当发生错误患者错误时，即使放射科医生没有注意到当前和之前的X光照片之间的差异，当前和之前的照片之间的比较也可以很容易地提醒她错误患者错误。 所提出的技术具有额外的优点，即患者照片可以为解释医生提供迄今为止不可用的临床信息。因此，这项技术可能，除了提供内在的，外部可见的标识符，提高解释医生？准确性和效率。

According the Institute of Medicine's 1999 report "To Err is Human," it is estimated that nearly 100,000 people die every year in the United States due to medical errors. It is estimated that nationally the number of serious adverse events due to wrong-patient errors in Radiology, where one patient's medical imaging study is placed in another patient's folder, is about 10,000 per year. Such errors can result in serious harm to both involved patients. The Joint Commission has recognized this to be a serious problem and mandates that a dual-identifier technique be implemented whenever any medical service is provided. Despite this dual-identifier mandate, wrong-patient errors continue to occur in Radiology. The proposed innovation is a novel technology that automatically captures patient photographs simultaneously with every medical imaging study. This technology could lead to a powerful additive identification tool and help prevent mislabeling of imaging examinations, thereby resulting in fewer medical errors. In addition, digital photographs may lead to improvement in the diagnostic interpretation of medical imaging examinations without an adverse impact on interpretation time.The proposed technology is based on automatically and seamlessly obtaining point-of-care patient facial photographs along with each and every medical imaging study. These photographs will serve as unique, intrinsic, externally visible patient identifiers, which will be embedded within the medical imaging studies. When interpreting radiologists and physicians view the medical images, the photographs are also automatically displayed in a separate window in the picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) workstation. Thus, when a wrong-patient error occurs, even if the radiologist does not notice the difference between the current and prior radiographs, a comparison between the current and prior photographs can easily alert her to the wrong-patient error. The proposed technology has the added advantage that the patient photographs can provide the interpreting physicians with clinical information, which has hitherto not been available. Thus this technology may, in addition to providing intrinsic, externally-visible identifiers, improve interpreting physicians? accuracy and efficiency.