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NIH announced a new policy that would require its physicians to use electronic health records to document the amount of radiation that patients receive when they undergo CT scans or other medical imaging procedures.

The agency announced the new policy in the latest edition of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

The policy requires manufacturers of scanners to provide software that tracks a patient's radiation dose and adds that information to the patient's EHR. In particular, the change applies to vendors that provide imaging equipment to NIH, such as GE Healthcare, Philips, Siemens Healthcare and Toshiba Medical Systems.

David Bluemke, director of radiology and imaging sciences at the NIH Clinical Center and a co-author of the journal policy article, said the radiation data initially would be accessible through EHR services provided by Google Health and Microsoft's Health Vault. He said the agency aims to eventually have the information accessible through a national EHR system.

Research Supports Policy Change: The policy change follows a recent Archives of Internal Medicine study finding that increased exposure to radiation was linked to a rise in the number of new cancer diagnoses and cancer-related deaths. Another study in the same journal found that patients are exposed to four times more radiation from screenings than previously thought.

In the latest policy article, Bluemke and his colleague Ronald Neumann suggested that hospitals should implement the same radiation policy and requirements. The authors said this change would provide researchers with greater amounts of data to better understand the risks that patients face through radiation exposures.
 
Source: JACR

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