DICOM Viewing on a Tablet: Can You Offer it to Recruit New Imaging Professionals?.

DICOM Viewing on a Tablet Now Available

Traditionally, teleradiologists and radiology technicians have only been able to review medical images from a specific workstation, which means they had no mobility or viewing options. Thanks to the advent of new medical imaging solutions and a new device that allows DICOM viewing on a tablet, those restrictions are being lifted.

Looking at images in a premium quality environment has always been assigned to a workstation with proprietary hardware and software. A team of imaging professionals and radiologists got together to change that situation, creating the first scenario for DICOM viewing on a tablet. They have branded the product MED-TAB, and it’s not a radiology app, and technically it’s not a tablet. It’s actually a “medical display in the form of a tablet”, says one of the company’s founders.

MED-TAB offers premium quality features, including a measuring pen and DICOM-compatibility. It has a calibrator and a calibration app that helps to adjust grayscales that fit the DICOM standard. Consumer devices, such as Apple’s iPad, do not offer this capability, making the MED-TAB a true teleradiology problem solver. Furthermore, the MED-TAB screen is 69 percent larger than the iPad Air 2 and around 67 percent larger than the Galax Tab 4.

While this news is exciting, especially for teleradiologists who have longed for more mobile options, there is also a cloud-based image management solution out there that doesn’t require a MED-TAB tablet. Thanks to cloud-based solutions, all a teleradiologist or any healthcare professional requires is a secure URL to view radiology exams.

When images are accessible via the internet through a secure server, healthcare professionals can bypass the problems that are so common today related to proprietary viewers. Not only do they not have unfettered access to images, they’re also held hostage by their PACS vendors who charge a lot of money every time images need to be migrated.

Virtual cloud management offers providers a chance to rid themselves of proprietary CD burning units, which are a time consuming and not altogether reliable. Furthermore, the CD method of storing and sharing medical images puts patient information at risk because it is so easy to misplace, have stolen or damaged.

Healthcare providers today are looking for efficiencies far and wide, and as medical image files continue to get larger and larger, working with a cloud-based system for managing radiology-based images is the perfect solution for access, archiving, business continuity and disaster recovery. Furthermore, there are the viewer options available with cloud based solutions, which can be passed along to new imaging professionals who expect to be able to use mobile devices to view images.

OffSite Image Management, Inc. gives clients a chance to view their medical images on any device that can connect to the internet. OffSite is actually a company that offers a 360-degree solution to our clients’ needs. We give them the ability to take control of their data and secure assets through vendor neutral archiving, health information exchange (HIE) and high-end solutions that will actually save our clients’ money.