How often has someone in your family had to drive to a hospital to pick up an important X-ray or a MRI study and then drive it to another medical facility so a doctor can review it?
What if there was an easier way to move these images without the need to take time off from work, fill out paperwork and pay copying fees?
Researchers Jeffrey Carr, M.D., Yaorong Ge, Ph.D., and their team from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center’s biomedical imaging and biomedical engineering departments have developed new technology that would give patients and their families the ability to directly control where their medical images go without travelling to each hospital or having to do a lot of work on the Internet.
The scientists are demonstrating their prototype system this week at the annual Radiologic Society of North America meeting in Chicago.
Their prototype, called Personally Controlled Access Registry (PCARE), allows patients to control who can have access to their medical data, or in this case, medical images. Instead of making a physical move, the images move electronically from one hospital to the doctors who need them.
The system uses any card with a magnetic strip so patients could slide their cards at PCARE affiliated facilities to control access to their images. In the future, this could also be accomplished through an application on mobile phones or other devices.
This prototype was made possible through a three-year, $2 million grand opportunity (GO) grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), the technology arm of National Institutes of Health (NIH). The goal of this research is technological development of new and different ways to improve health care.
Media Relations
Paula Faria: pfaria@wakehealth.edu, 336-716-1279
Bonnie Davis: bdavis@wakehealth.edu, 336-713-1597