The Cloud and Patient Controlled Access
Last Updated on Friday, 31 August 2012 04:19
Written by deepwellarchive Friday, 31 August 2012 04:19 |
August 23, 2012
The Cloud and Patient Controlled Access
Wake Forest School of Medicine recently built and tested a patient-controlled access key-registry (PCARE) in an effort enable image sharing among unaffiliated health care facilities. PCARE would also eliminate the need for patients to take CD’s from facility to facility during treatment.
From an article posted on diagnosticimaging.com “Through the PCARE portal, access keys were issued by the image source facilities and when the keys were digitally signed by the patients for requesting facilities, the images became available for retrieval. In addition to ease of information transfer, this type of system would help protect patient privacy, the authors said”.
A combination of Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) cloud-based storage solutions along with PCARE could potentially revolutionize the sharing of critical image data. By eliminating the possibility of CD’s being encrypted on one facility’s PACS and not being recognized by another, the potential for loss or damage during transport, and by eliminating requests for priors among facilities, the amount of time between diagnosis and treatment could be decreased for patients.
Although imaging sharing technologies are not new, giving patients total accesses to their diagnostic images through PCARE, along with similar trial programs, are relatively new technologies. Certainly a broader adaptation of cloud based VNA technology to facilitate communication between disparate PACS, and giving patients overall control of their diagnostics image will improve patient care, especially during the critical diagnostic and treatment phase.
We will bring you more news, research and opinions on this and other topics in future posts.
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“A Vendor Neutral Archive Company”
Of course, a patient-controlled model won’t work if patients don’t participate. However, Ge and Carr told AuntMinnie.com they believe that patients are now ready to take a more active role in the image-sharing process.