The Mayo Clinic is not short on respect in the medical community and it is extending it’s highly regarded reputation with a first-of-a-kind computerized tracking system that will replace current systems that are too time-consuming in their manual processes.
The imaging exam tracking system at Mayo offers more consistency and safety for the patient due to the system’s ability to use the smallest amount of radiation necessary to provide a clear picture and accurate diagnosis. They’re calling it the DICOM Index Tracker, or DIT for short. A Mayo researcher designed the system with researchers from an Arizona clinic associated with Mayo.
The DIT is a DICOM storage system that tracks the various data associated with images and compacts it in a format that is accessible across multiple departments. Tracking the amount of radiation a person receives is a part of the data that is stored in the DIT. Before the DIT, tracking the dosage levels was done manually. Now that there is a push to keep levels of exposure as low as possible, providing a more timely account of the levels is becoming more common.
The DICOM storage device created at Mayo also provides a central location for digital images, including cardiac catheterization, CT scans, mammography and more. The DICOM storage system allows the information to be tracked by procedure or by patient. The engineers behind the DIT provide alert features to let medical professionals know if a patient has received larger than usual exposure to radiation.
DICOM storage benefits:
- Gives medical professionals the ability to monitor patient records from one centralized location
- Quality assurance can be tracked more efficiently and accurately
- Patient receives more consistent and safe care
DICOM standards aren’t new – they’ve been around for 20 years – but there are new additions to the standards nearly every year. This is where medical professionals are likely to face challenges in developing a fixed database that can track all the data that needs to be stored, accessed and shared. However, the engineers behind the DICOM storage system have programmed it to recognize new encoding and build up a database for a more efficient system.
With more than 1.5 million imaging tests occurring at three of Mayo’s largest campuses every year, the benefits of the DIT DICOM storage system will most certainly make life easier for administrators and help them provide better care for patients in the future.
One company that specializes in image information exchange is OffSite Image Management Inc. OffSite knows that it has become a necessity for data exchange to occur across various vendor platforms, which is why OffSite has embraced a non-proprietary approach to radiological image exchange. Honeycomb is the platform OffSite uses to share the image information. Nobody wants to rely on film or CDs anymore, which is why OffSite uses the Honeycomb platform so that the workflow can stream from department to department effortlessly. The Honeycomb solution involves a quick and safe method of delivery across multiple networks.