Image Sharing Demonstration Includes Dose Monitoring to Improve Patient Safety

CHICAGO, Nov. 29, 2009 — The Image Sharing Demonstration at RSNA 2009 will encompass methods for sharing images, reports and related information for the improvement of patient care in radiology. The demonstration features patient control of documented medical history through individual accounts in electronic health record systems and improvements in patient safety made possible through use of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE®) Radiation Exposure Monitoring (REM) profile.

The REM profile provides a standards-based mechanism for automatically communicating dose information to systems designed to record, monitor and analyze this information, making it possible for care sites to track the exposure of individual patients to determine whether actual exposure is in line with best practices guidelines and to share information with local or national registries set up to aggregate and analyze patient radiation dose information.

The demonstration (South Building, Booth 2843) sets the REM profile in the context of a health information exchange network for sharing of medical images and other health documents through personal health record (PHR) accounts. Eleven companies are showing the advantages to clinical care made possible by convenient electronic access to medical information. Krucom, a healthcare IT company based in Lund, Sweden, is providing systems compliant with the REM profile that enable dose information gathered at the modality to be recorded, managed and analyzed. Similar systems are in use in a European pilot project covering over 5 million patients.

Government agencies, healthcare professional societies and patient advocacy groups aim to minimize radiation exposure and improve patient safety. The REM Profile advances these goals. Radiation exposure has emerged as a critical patient safety issue in medical imaging. Documenting a patient's medical imaging history and making dose information accessible will help reduce the risks associated with cumulative radiation dose exposure.

"The network will help improve longitudinal health records, provide an exam history to reduce the number of redundant examinations, and reduce radiation exposure to the individual and the population at large," said David S. Mendelson, M.D., professor of radiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and co-chair of the Board of IHE International.