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IBM announced it is working with Brigham and Women's Hospital of Boston on a research project to create an online "radiology theatre" where teams of medical experts can simultaneously discuss and review patients' medical test data using a Web browser. IBM has created a secure Web site that allows select medical experts at Brigham and Women's Hospital to "make rounds" on a patient -- no matter where the doctors are located. Data such as CT scans, MRIs, EKGs and other medical tests can be posted on the Web site and analyzed by the team. Each medical expert can talk and be seen through live streaming audio/video through their standard web connection, and have the ability to whiteboard over the Web page as well as input information to the patient's record.

A group of doctors can log into a secure Web site at the same time to review and analyze a patient's recent battery of tests. For instance, a radiologist could use her mouse to circle an area on the CT scan of a lung that needs a closer look. Then using the mouse she could zoom into that scan to enlarge the view for all to see. An expert on lung cancer could use his mouse to show how the spot had changed from the last scan. And then, a pathologist could talk about patient treatments based on spots of that size depending on age and prior health history, paging through clinical data accessible on the site.

The theatre allows all these experts to discuss, tag and share information simultaneously, rather than paging through stacks of papers, calling physicians to discuss scan results and then charting the results. This collaborative consultation brings together the personal data, the experts and the clinical data in one physical, visual theatre.

What also stands out in the Radiology Theatre is that the software only requires a standard Web browser. There's nothing to download and it's built with open Web standards. That means a doctor can be at any location using a laptop, mobile device, or other desktop to collaborate with colleagues and confer on results.

IBM is demonstrating this technology at an IBM Research open house on the Smarter Web in San Francisco.

The Radiology Theatre has the potential for tapping experts from all over the world to consult on cases. Multi-discipline and potentially multi-institutional data could be brought together in the theatre. Using telepresence provides 'just-like-being-there' live virtual meetings with sight, sound and interactive Web experiences. The theatre has the capability to be used as an educational archive of medical cases for teaching conferences. The theatre can act as an electronic whiteboard of information for experts to comment on or update.

Blue Spruce: The Technical Foundation
IBM researchers have combined different Web components -- data mashups, high-definition video, audio and graphics -- all on the same browser page. Called Blue Spruce, this technology allows multiple users to "cobrowse" or interact with these components in real-time and see each others' changes. All of the components are live and all participants can cause change that will be propagated in a secure manner.

Behind the scenes, the Radiology Theatre Web site is hosted by an IBM secure software server, which provides the conference management, application synchronization and subscription to push services. IBM built the Radiology Theatre using the WebKit Open Source Browser Engine and IBM's Blue Spruce prototype code. Right now the server runs on Linux or the MacOS X operating systems. The browser can be Safari or Internet Explorer. The application uses the following open standards: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Ajax, XMPP and H.264. Because the application follows OpenAjax metadata specification, the Radiology Theatre can utilize any Web widget.

For more information on IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/think.

Source: IBM