by Stuart Hall
RIS/PACS solutions provider, RADinfo SYSTEMS, has developed a new software program that allows physicians who are seeking consultative opinions regarding medical images to access and share critical and protected images through common e-mail systems.
"This system is well accepted by the US Government. So what we have is a system to easily send DICOM images, you don’t have to configure the DICOM viewer with an IP address and AE title in order to view DICOM images on the receiving side," says Dr. Chen-Tai Ma, CEO & President of RADinfo SYSTEMS.
"Therefore, people can treat this as a standard email, making it much easier for the healthcare provider. If one wishes to get a second opinion or send key images to their colleagues, DICOMmail will make that very easy," he adds.
DICOMmail contains two parts. The first part is the free DICOMmail Viewer, which is based on RADinfo SYSTEMS FDA-approved RSVS visualization technology. The second part is the DICOMmail Send, which allows the user to drag and drop an image into the software for delivery to any email address. DICOMmail supports DICOM, jpeg, gif, and bitmap images.
"It’s just as you would receive a PDF from anyone. When you receive such an email, the system will prompt you to download an Adobe Reader from Adobe. The second time, you won’t have to download Adobe, it will already be on your system. Our software works the very same way. When you receive a DICOMmail, it will contain an attachment of study image. There are a couple of ways to send this image. One is that the file name will contain the patient’s name. The second is we can anonymize the identity of the patient so once you receive that mail, all the information related to that patient will be wiped out, and the file will contain a fake name and a fake id.
"However, if the sender wishes to send just as is, then you will see the true identity of the patient. Now you simply double click the email just as you do for any attachment and you will open that mail with our DICOMmail viewer (RSVS). The viewer is free of charge. The system can send the annotation (the GSPS), encapsulated data, video/audio clip with the image study as well. We can also drop a report into our email software, group together, and send to the receiving side," he adds.
India-based radiologist Sumer Sethi says the innovation could make a significant difference to teleradiology: "The main hindrance for remote radiology reading has always been methodology for DICOM image transfer. And we have found at places where load of cases is low or there is need for opinion on only a few cases the price for software becomes a limiting factor. Further for an individual radiologist ‘email’ option seems like tailor made approach. DICOM email appears as a vendor independent solution for secure teleradiology.
"Until recently there has been no standard for an interoperable and manufacturer-independent protocol for secure teleradiology connections. This protocol is easy to implement and safe for personalized patient data."
The company plans to integrate the DICOMmail into its clinical and diagnostic viewer. The aim is for the clinical viewer to have a button to access the mail facility so that a physician can be at a reading station to drag and drop an image into an email and then just send the email out. DICOMmail will also integrate into RADinfo SYSTEMS' CD burner software (CDPP), which means every patient CD will have DICOMmail as an email facility. Whomever gets the CD, be it a doctor or radiologist or even if it’s the patient that gets a CD, if they wish to send a certain image to certain people then from the CD, they can simply select the image and send it out. The receiving side can then download the RSVS DICOMmail viewer and read it.
"DICOMmail will be one our key products at this year’s RSNA Show. The viewer itself has an on-line help menu. If you have even a little experience with any viewer you can get into using it right away. We try to make it ‘dummy proof’ so anyone can use it", explains Dr. Chen-Tai Ma.
DICOMmail free demo
RADinfo SYSTEMS is offering a 60 day free demo of the DICOMmail Send portion of the software until December 31, 2007. This will allow the end-user to experience how DICOMmail can help improve access, as well as share critical and protected images through email by simply dragging-and-dropping files.
DICOMmail White Paper
