Where would the healthcare community be in this digital age without the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard? As the top choice for exchanging medical imaging
and related information, the DICOM exchange has provided countless healthcare professionals with the images and data they need to assist millions of patients.
Radiologists were first introduced to DICOM more than two decades ago, but it wasn’t until the mid-90s that DICOM really began to go viral. It has grown into a standard that handles, stores, prints and transmits images and information on a consistent basis. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) holds the copyright to the standard, as the people behind the format are also members of NEMA.
Today, DICOM is something every radiology office in just about every part of the world has heard about if not uses on a daily basis. As technology has improved, healthcare professionals in pathology, cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, ophthalmology, neurology and many others have all become acquainted with imaging techniques that fit the DICOM standard.
The standard has many levels of support and different dimensions, including the DICOM exchange, which allows for the integration of many image data types to be archived and exchanged. It’s through the exchange that patients can have their images reviewed by specialists miles and miles away from where the scans were taken, and it’s what’s leading to better patient outcomes. One of the biggest impacts of the standard is that when a radiologist sends an image, the physician sees the same gray scale image the radiologist saw in the lab.
Speaking of better patient outcomes, image quality is something that has become vastly improved thanks to the DICOM standard. While the images are improved, there continues to be issues in regards to the consistency of these images in their being displayed on different monitors/work stations. Part of this issue is related to providers that use proprietary equipment to handle their medical images. Perhaps it’s something you’ve already noticed in your facility? In some cases, a department down the hall can’t retrieve images due to different PACS systems being used.
Thanks to technology like vendor neutral archiving (VNA), DICOM exchange is becoming a more usable solution. VNA doesn’t care what system is being used because it is vendor agnostic. Vendors entrenched with true VNA technology are giving medical professionals the freedom they’ve been looking for in their archiving and transferring abilities.
The DICOM standard is constantly being changed to reflect the latest technological advancements. For this reason, the DICOM standard is rarely less than a couple of months old at any given time. This doesn’t mean your hardware and software has to change every two months – with vendors like OffSite Image Management, Inc., all you need is s secure connection to the Internet and a URL and you’ll be able to view medical images from just about any device. We’ve developed VNA solutions that fit the DICOM standard and give our clients quick and easy access to images. Find out more about our solutions today.