16. “ Although teleradiology can improve care by allowing access to specialists, a self investigation found that it also opens the door to confusion, errors and outright fraud”. “ Radiologists warn of the potential for "ghosting," an illegal practice whereby a doctor simply rubber-stamps the reading by a technician without giving it so much as a glance. “
France holds one of the lowest PACS utilization rates among all EU member states at 25%. The low deployment of PACS is especially significant among the large industrialized countries of Western Europe . Responses from a survey of 906 chief information officers in the EU for the "eHealth Benchmarking III" report, published 13 April, 2011, by the Information Society and Media Directorate-General of the European Commission. All charts courtesy of Laurent Tréluyer, director of strategy for the Agence Regionale de Santé, île-de-France.
A secure service platform is established as the base for the exchange of the R-Bay Services. The platform hosts the required IT services that support the delivery and consumption of these. The system architecture represents the industry leading portal-based approach to providing the full range of imaging and information capabilities from a shared centralised service centre.
Legal: Uniform EU-Legislation regarding teleradiology “Medical Act”, protection of patient’s rights. Globalization: outsourcing to lower-cost countries is a fact. Jurisdictional differences protect radiologists from direct competitors in some countries. Universal medical licensing? Standards (IHE): further seemless integration of information, Platforms with seemless integration of PACS and EPR for teleradiology purposes, further standardisation in exchanging documents Privacy regulations : Harmonisation of regulations regarding protection of personal data for cross-border services. Information privacy remains the greatest source of concern about medical outsourcing Quality : Quality auditing and regulations, transparency in monitoring processes, performance indicators Financial: Reimbursement issues in socialized medicine, different reimbursement schemes need to be harmonised/adapted
Jikei University Hospital in Japan
iPhone running echocardiography reading software. Villagers in a remote area of Honduras received access to first-rate echocardiography thanks to a project that married a handheld ultrasound scanner with an iPhone-based image interpretation app. The project could be a model for delivering high-quality imaging to other underserved areas.