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. 2022 Aug;35(4):754-759.
doi: 10.1007/s10278-022-00624-9. Epub 2022 Aug 23.

Creation of a Multi-vendor Image-Sharing Solution

Rajeev Nowrangi  1 , Laurie A Perry  1 , Jennifer Regan  1 , David Hulefeld  1 , Sarah O'Brien  1 , Timothy J OConnor  1 , Alexander J Towbin  2   3   4
Affiliations

Creation of a Multi-vendor Image-Sharing Solution

Rajeev Nowrangi et al. J Digit Imaging. 2022 Aug.

Abstract

Transferring medical imaging studies from one institution to another is a common occurrence in today's medical practice. For the past two decades, radiology departments have relied on physical media (compact discs and digital video disks) and human couriers to accomplish image transfer. This mode of transfer is slow, prone to failure, and reliant on outdated technology. To address these shortcomings, multiple image-sharing vendors have created electronic, cloud-based solutions. While these solutions solve multiple problems, a new problem has been introduced: it is difficult to send or receive images across image-sharing platforms. In this work, we describe how we have developed a solution to share images across multiple vendor platforms.

Keywords: Enterprise imaging; Image sharing; Image transfer; Interoperability.

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Conflict of interest statement

Alexander J. Towbin declares the following: Elsevier—author royalties; Applied Radiology—consultant; Cystic Fibrosis Foundation—grant funding. All other authors have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
System map showing the process for image import. Images originate at an outside hospital (hospital 1–5). Each hospital can transmit the images via their preferred image-sharing vendor. The images transfer from the originating hospital’s gateway to the vendor’s image-sharing cloud. From the cloud, the images are transferred to a gateway in our organization’s data center. The images are then auto-forwarded to our vendor neutral archive’s (VNA) holding pen. One of our staff members works a queue from the holding pen, normalizes the patient’s demographic data, and imports the study to our picture archiving and communication system (PACS)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
System map showing the process for image export. Images are requested to be sent from our hospital to another hospital. A staff member sends the images via a digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) destination in our picture archiving and communication system (PACS). The destination routes the study to the receiving hospital’s preferred image-sharing gateway. From there, the images are sent to the vendor’s cloud where they are routed to the receiving hospital’s gateway and into their systems
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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