This article summarizes the consensus reached at the Summit on Color in Medical Imaging held at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 8–9, 2013, co-sponsored by the FDA and ICC (International Color Consortium). The purpose of the meeting was to gather information on how color is currently handled by medical imaging systems to identify areas where there is a need for improvement, to define objective requirements, and to facilitate consensus development of best practices. Participants were asked to identify areas of concern and unmet needs. This summary documents the topics that were discussed at the meeting and recommendations that were made by the participants. Key areas identified where improvements in color would provide immediate tangible benefits were those of digital microscopy, telemedicine, medical photography (particularly ophthalmic and dental photography), and display calibration. Work in these and other related areas has been started within several professional groups, including the creation of the ICC Medical Imaging Working Group.
A patient has an imaging study performed at one facility and has the study exported to portable media. Later, the patient takes the media to a different institution. The study on that media may need to be imported into that new institution's imaging system. This would be done to avoid a repeat examination, or so that the study can be on file for reference purposes. Importing prior studies is best performed by creating a new order on the institution's imaging system and then associating the DICOM objects from the prior study with it. In this way the prior study is actually inserted into the imaging system's electronic health record (EHR) and is properly indexed so that it can be identified and later retrieved as needed. In the past at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), importing prior DICOM studies into the VA systems had been a very slow labor-intensive process that took anywhere from 10 to 30 min to import a single study. We have developed a new DICOM Importer application that reduces the manual effort to import a prior study to less than a minute. We have redesigned and automated the process to make it much more efficient for the user. The Importer also handles contract examinations that are ordered by the VA and performed at outside imaging facilities, with similar time savings. This work is important because is addresses one of the major unsolved problems with import reconciliation workflow: how to efficiently handle the importing of prior studies.
Radiologists routinely make decisions with only limited information when assigning protocol instructions for the performance of advanced medical imaging examinations. Opportunity exists to simultaneously improve the safety, quality and efficiency of this workflow through the application of an electronic solution leveraging health system resources to provide concise, tailored information and decision support in real-time. Such a system has been developed using an open source, open standards design for use within the Veterans Health Administration. The Radiology Protocol Tool Recorder (RAPTOR) project identified key process attributes as well as inherent weaknesses of paper processes and electronic emulators of paper processes to guide the development of its optimized electronic solution. The design provides a kernel that can be expanded to create an integrated radiology environment. RAPTOR has implications relevant to the greater health care community, and serves as a case model for modernization of legacy government health information systems.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.