A Web-Based Approach To Distributing Medical Images For Referring Physicians Outside Hospitals Without Specialised User Management

Medical image data is used increasingly by physicians in hospitals as well as by external physicians taking care of their patients' treatment Not only do external physicians often want to read the report but they also want to see the corresponding images. The expanding, cost-efficient internet is predestined to transfer image data from the hospital to external referring physicians. The described system uses widely available internet technology to grant external physicians access to their patients. A hospital physician can trigger the sending an e-mail to an external physician while viewing the images. The external physician receives an encrypted e-mail and can open an included URL link. With this link he has temporary access to the defined study on the hospital's web server. Images are provided in highest quality format with specific compression algorithms to work efficiently on slow internet connections. The physician can work on these images in his browser using several standard image processing functions as well as view the report. Teleconferences with the hospital's physicians are an additional feature. External physicians need only register once with their e-mail and key. No additional network infrastructure configuration is needed.