MEDICAL IMAGE SHARING THROUGH A PATIENT CONTROLLED EXCHANGE SYSTEM

医学影像在高质量的病人护理中发挥着重要作用。许多诊断和治疗决策严重依赖于图像数据（包括图像和报告）。在当今的医疗环境中，大多数患者在不同的地理位置有多次接触，图像数据分散在许多站点。无法在不同的组织之间共享医学图像数据会导致严重的问题：由于缺乏数据而导致患者护理不足，由于无效的图像分发而导致护理延迟，以及由于重复图像采集而导致成本和潜在健康风险的显着增加。

Medical images play an important role in quality patient care. Many diagnostic and treatment decisions are heavily dependant on image data (including images and reports). In today¿s medical environment, most patients have multiple encounters at geographically separate locations, with image data dispersed across a number of sites. The inability to share medical image data across separate organizations results in significant problems: inadequate patient care due to absent data, delayed care due to ineffective image distribution, and significant increases in cost and potential health risk due to duplicate image acquisition. Sharing image data through a network for image exchange will lead to better informed medical decisions, better analysis of medical outcomes, reductions in unnecessary expenses and improvements in the quality and safety of patient care. The value of patient care will be enhanced when systems at different locations are capable of managing, exchanging and displaying medical information in its many forms, including images. In addition, an optimal solution could dramatically reduce overhead on the health care infrastructure. National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) NIBIB has funded several projects over the last few years to establish basic infrastructures to promote the exchange of medical images across broad geographic areas within the United States. Several critical factors have been identified in those efforts in order to develop a successful image sharing system, e.g. security, identity, privacy and confidentiality, consent and permissions, bandwidth, ease of use, etc.