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iPods Used for Medical Images
spagiola writes "There's a nice little story on CNN about a doctor in Geneva who has developed ways to use iPods to view medical images. His software, called Osirix (OSS, BTW) enables medical professionals to view medical images on their iPods, saving them and the hospitals they work for thousands of dollars in expensive equipment."
It looks like it started out as a simple, "portable hard drive" system... hardly different from the stories about storing BLAST data or Lord of the Rings clips on an iPod. The addition of the iPod's photo-display capabilities and - more significantly, I think - the iChat sharing makes this sound like a setup. I wonder when they will incorporate support for the iPod's video capabilities...
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it took some time to find it, didn't it?
That somebody is looking at pictures of my broken bones on a 2.5" screen, and than make decisions based on that. Really comfy feeling. Even when you zoom in, the image stays small. I opt for the same software but than used on a 12 to 14" screen on a tablet PC. Still not too expensive, but just a bit bigger so details show up a bit better.
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So they managed to change their program to store files on the ipod, as well as pictures that the ipod could view? Which would have been really hard to do.
Somebody is in love with the Ipod.
Several patients diagnosed with "just a scratch".
I'm sure hospitals everywhere will go for this! Let all your doctors have an iPod so they can look at x-ray images and listen to music at the same time!
Not exactly what TFA says, they don't 'use' the iPod to 'view', they store the images on the iPod in file mode, so the article could re-written to say:
Some people have created sofware which allows images to be stored on an external hard drive.
In other words....
Nothing to see here, this is not the video/photo ipod in action.
Lets say a doctor misses a vital sign on the image. In court, would a valid prosecution argument be that the display on these units are not fit for purpose?
Can you really expect medical practitioners to draw valid conclusions from such a small display? I think not. I certainly wouldn't like to be a health authority trying to justify the use of such a device in court!
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So the doctor can carry around X-rays on his tiny iPod Photo screen instead of looking at it on one of those big clunky clear 20" monitors. That makes sense unless you want to avoid a malpractice suit. I can barely read the names of my MP3s on that screen much less diagnose someone's problem! If storage is the issue then just carry a portable notebook hard drive in a USB case or keep the files on a private LAN.
Wouldn't they have to be 'secured' to compy with HIPAA regulations in any way? iPods are easily pocketed, and I would think an iPod with Medical Imaging files on it would be at risk...
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How this is more cost-effective--or more effective, period--than low-cost color PDAs with CF microdrives. Surely the higher resolution, larger screen, and more flexible OS would be better?
It's true that high-capacity microdrives are more expensive, but that's still a lot of photos at that resolution.
However it compares, it awfully neat, though, and a good example of how technology can be a real life-improvement above pure entertainment.
Before anyone gets into a tiff about viewing the images on a small iPod screen, I suggest you read the article. The physicians are merely STORING the images on the iPod and then hooking the iPod up to a personal computer (w/nice monitor) to view the images.
To sum up, RTFA
Am I reading that wrong or are they storing personal medical data on .MAC????
Shouldn't there be a whole host of privacy issues (and no doubt laws) with this?
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It just seems like they were looking for a bit of an excuse to use Mac technology. What I've got a bit of a problem with is using .Mac for a place to store medical images for sharing amongst colleagues. I don't know if that would really meet with security and confidentiality requirements for this kind of data. What they really need to do is set up their own secure server. Which raises this somewhat offtopic question: Does anyone know how to set up their own .Mac webdav server and tricking Tiger into thinking that it's a real server? I saw some hacks to do this ages ago, but have they matured?
Viewing/manipulating/storing visual medical data on a high-end desktop computer makes sense to me. I'd presume that such machines would exist in hospitals, and in doctor's offices, but I am lost as to any reason for the ipod, even after reading the article. Many people, during commutes by train/plain or what not, listen to music, watch video, or play games on devices such as ipods. Do physicians instead flip through MRI scan output to pass the time? I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing my doctor is walking around with digital imaging of my insides on the same device he's currently using to listen to music. If instead it's just a need to transfer data from their office to home, or between hospitals, why not use something more appropriate, such as a burned CD, or much better, through an networked inter-hospital database over an encrypted connection. Any chance that some company has been giving this guy just more than one apple a day?
ok, the screen on the iPod is lame -- no arguemnet here -- but it seems to me the logical next step here is a high res monitor -- with an iPod dock (a la Bose Sound Dock) -- that you could pop the iPod into to view the image properly.
not much different then throwing the old x-ray film into the bright light thingy.....but high tech.
Good to see they have addressed the risk of patient data being leaked (iPod being nicked or left on the bus), but the article isn't entirely clear on what the procedure for stripping the patient data is - does the user have to do it themselves, or does the software force you to do it each time you upload an image?
Still a very cool use - though maybe not one that could be easily rolled out across all areas of medicine unless it needs virtually zero technical know-how...
Shame really, our legal system is going to make adoption of new tools (in medicine in particular) difficult.
Still a neat concept. She should win an award or something just for outside the box thinking.
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Using an iPod to store medical images is not a very good idea. There is no security, and no data integrity. And iPods are much more likely to be stolen than, say, a burned CD. All of that said, having a portable storage medium for medical images makes some sense. Perhaps this is yet another application for USB thumbdrives. Add some encryption (TrueCrypt) and an application (Osiris) that can be run from the drive and you might have a nifty little product.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I work in medical imaging, and I have used Osirix. It is easily one of the best open source image display programs around. The other most notable is Amide, but I digress. Osirix works well for scientists and others looking to save money, but I think physicians would have a difficult time saying it is better then the commercial vendors software. Commercial workstations are tens of thousands of dollars, and while the price is extremely inflated, you do often get a lot of functionality for that money. Osirix is no substitute for that. Osirix works fine as a third display terminal or something in the doctor's office, but I wouldn't want any radiologists I know using it as their primary reporting station.
The part about the iPods is interesting too. Having ready and portable access to images is neat, but of course, this is not used as a primary reporting tool. It is useful to take to conferences to share interesting cases, etc, but not for any other great purpose.
There is nothing here that couldn't be done cheaper and better on other platforms. The iPod/Apple angle is just a gimmick ...
Plus, the doctors can have musical discussions with their patients, everything from "Doctor, doctor, gimme the news" to "I can see clearly now, the pain is gone"...
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
"saving them and the hospitals they work for thousands of dollars in expensive equipment."
... I mean, there must be a way ... I mean, imagine all those thousands of dollars we could earn ...
Whoot! How dare they!!!! Sue the bastards
Obviously the screen is totally inadequate for reading films.
So it's (physically) a little bigger than a thumb drive, and a little smaller than an external USB drive. And it holds a little more than a thumb drive, and a little less than an external USB drive.
samzenpus, what's wrong with you? You drag me here, waste my time like this. You saw a guy use an iPod to store data. Well I am... over-fuckin' whelmed. What d'you want for that, a junior g-man badge?
From the article: "IChat may not always provide the best video-quality images, depending on the network bandwidth available, but it's cheap and easy to use in comparison with the alternatives."
Just what I want to hear from my doctor: this isn't the best, but it's cheap!
And using Apple's .Mac for MEDICAL DATA BACKUP?! If this were done in the U.S., the HIPAA laws (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) would slap him down very, very fast. And sure, $100/yr gets him 80gb of data... but why not talk to the hospital IT department and spend $1000 one time to get a cheap, secure Linux server with many times that capacity?! Oh wait, Linux servers don't come with nifty earbuds that let you listen to your own music while on-the-go....
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These are certainly not diagnostic images. That doesn't mean that they're not useful. The color depth of grayscale film is 9 bits (at least this is what the human eye can distinguish). The resolution of a large sheet of film might only be 1024 x 4096. The color depth of 9 bits is difficult to reproduce consistently across the entire surface of phosphor tube. Most diagnostic images still use film.
When the doctor says "That pixel is your heart. From the looks of it, it is functioning perfectly." then I think it might be time for a second opinion.
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I think this article shows very well why we should fight against overly restrictive DRM/Closed Source etc. I suspect that this type of inventiveness would be much harder with a more restrictive product, so I say kudos to Apple for not treating all their users as guilty till proven innocent. In the end overly restrictive formats make us all lose out in more than just the most obvious ways.
What makes you think you can't store encrypted data on an iPod? No harder than using TrueCrypt on a thumbdrive, and with a lot more storage; and anyone stealing the thing will be more likely to just wipe it and use it as a music player.
Since I don't own an iPod, I can't check on this, but I would have thought Apple would include a disclaimer like
"Apple products are not intended for use in medical, life saving, or life sustaining applications."
If not, I can't wait for commercials like "Apple literally saved my life. Thanks, Steve!"
There is not only other hardware already out which does the same thing (and problably better) but he also says he can use "Apples Dot Mac" system to store images of patients to share with colleagues. No privacy problems there. And this was actually reported back in DECEMBER OF 2004. If you bother to read that article, the poor guy only has a 20GB HD on his laptop, so he thinks the 40GB on his iPod is some miracle. Idiot. Plus he uses iChat (I'm sure that is really secure to use over the Internet) to share the images online also. Chalk up another non-innovative use that gets posted up to slashdot that a ton of people are going to ooh and aah over for no good reason.
--ngoy
Most of the doctors I know already use PDAs that contain commercial databases of drugs and illnesses, etc. Would make sense to use them instead.
"saving them and the hospitals they work for thousands of dollars in expensive equipment"
And yet, at the same time costing patients millions in unnecessary procedures due to the fact that their Doctors were trying to look at medical records of their fricking IPods.
This has to be some kind of joke right? I mean... if not, I could totally write a firmware upgrade for the original Gameboy systems. The Doctors could play Tetris between killing patients! It would be sweet! Has anyone though about Lite-Brites? There is a real market here!
Wouldn't they have to be 'secured' to compy with HIPAA regulations in any way?
You didn't even read the summary, did you? "There's a nice little story on CNN about a doctor in Geneva..."
That should have been your first clue, but either way you should have RTFA. If you had, you would have seen that the first paragraph of the article includes GENEVA, Switzerland (CNN). To the very best of my knowledge, Switzerland is not subject to HIPAA.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Personally, I like to look at the geysers of blood. Those are always a good sign.
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I agree - the doctor in this case is really just using the iPod as a portable hard drive. All physicians have to know is "plug in iPod, pictures go in. Plug in iPod, and select the picture you want to see". The software takes care of the rest.
There's nothing stopping someone from modifying the display software to encrypt the messages. I work in health care (systems and security architecture), and this would be a simple enough add-on.
Besides, people stealing the iPod are more likely to wipe out the files and just use it as a music player than spend time looking at some guy's X-ray images. (Unless they *really* get off on those kind of things.)
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I don't think there's much chance of getting in a TIFF, the article says they're using Diacom for the format. @.~
(bad puns aside, yes, i know the meaning of tiff you mean.)
"...saving them and the hospitals they work for thousands of dollars in expensive equipment."
Or Just looking for a way to have your patient buy you an iPod.
I've got the patent on iTumours and iSurgery.
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Before this gets modded flamebait, i want to offer the disclaimer that i'm a thorough mac addict. That said, though i hate it when stock analysts harp on the half empty side of apple's decisions, I'm also getting tired of tech journalists using articles to imply that because a common feature or use (often implemented better and cheaper with other products) is available on an ipod it's somehow something new and great. Personally I look at it as financially wasteful. If it's storage portability a flash drive or firewire drive will hold more and cost less, and if it's image display then an old pentium 3 laptop costs $250-$350 used. If these professionals were really being innovative, the headline would read "doctors find new ways to recycle old laptops" To me it's only a slight variation from misrepresentations of bittorrent. It's one thing for the news to have a slight slant, but to omit the rest of the market for the purpose of glorifying one company's product is not a news story, it's an ad. I hope apple paid well for it.
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Great, they discovered that an iPod photo can store (guess what) pictures. Next you'll see ornithologists discovering that cameras can be used to take pictures of birds.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
I thought an Apple a day was supposed to keep the doctor away? Maybe that comes after medical tricorders and emergency medical holograms.
OSS, BTW? WTG! LOL, WTF?!?!
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The PSP has a bigger, higher-res screen and built-in wireless networking. Was the iPod really the best choice of commodity devices?
ipods cost much more than their equivalent sized firewire drives.. and that's at the apple store in the most exclusive shopping district in my city.
This article misses the point entirely... this guy made a program which is extremely capable and just happened to use ipods. I'll bet a million it's just as useful with *insert favorite firewire drive brand here*.. they could definitely save themselves a little more money by not paying for music playback with their storage.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
if it's not personally identifiable information, then probably not. most medical images aren't labelled up "mrs smith, SSN xxxxxxxxx"
This is interesting. My first thought was why not use an external HDD - it would cost a fraction of the price, and would not be nearly as appealing a target for thieves.
Having worked in a hospital for a number of years, the real purpose behind this is evident. Hospitals like to give doctors stuff. Expensive stuff like PDAs and wristwatches, as well as basic stuff like umbrellas, pens, satchels and the free food and drinks well stocked in the physician break rooms. Hospitals make their money by having patients, and besides the Emergency Department, all patients are admitted to the hospital (or referred to for various procedures) by doctors. So hospitals like to give things to physicians to thank them for making them money. In the USA laws exist, and have been strengthened in the last several years, seriously limiting what hospitals can provide for physicians. This is of course to keep these gifts from becoming outright bribes.
Now in the case of these iPods we see a loophole. A way for the hospital to purchase really, really nice gifts for their doctors, under the pretense that it has some medical use. Quite interesting indeed.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
People complain about trying to view a TV show on an iPods tiny screen, do I really want my doctor trying to decipher my MRI on that thing? And yes, I realize they are also used for storage - I just wonder if there is a better solution for this sort of thing (Pocket PC, etc.)
We've hooked an iPod shuffle to our new phone system. When customers are on hold now, they get to listen to cool music not some synthiepop mozart castration. No pictures on the phone system though.
One customer even asked if he could get the music from our phone system on CD.
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If instead it's just a need to transfer data from their office to home, or between hospitals, why not use something more appropriate, such as a burned CD, or much better, through an networked inter-hospital database over an encrypted connection.
I don't know about this guy, but my cousin is a doctor at a major Swedish hospital. This hospital is rolling out thin clients, removing all PC:s with hard drives and CD drives. They do this for reasons of security and ease of administration. So far so good. According to my cousin, they do all the ordinary mistakes: They impose a uniform usage profile on all users, from janitors to surgeons. They get the same programs (all centrally administered), and they get measely 200 MB storage on a central server. That's about one powerpoint presentation for a doctor. As a result, they have all swapped their stetoscopes for USB drives (which they can attach to the thin clients). It didn't really get much more secure (flash drives could be somewhat more secure than magnetic media, but on the flip side, they are actually running around with these things all over the place now), but at least the sysadms don't have to bother.
...to get a company iPod. if only i could get ssh working on it.
echo $sig;
Apple's Mac OS/X supports the native creation and use of AES-128 CBC crypto on disk images. It would be trivial to setup the iPod to be as secure as your key management processes.
I'm sure there's a pretty good reason why they spend "thousands of pounds on equipment" in hospitals rather than using TINY MUSIC PLAYERS to view medical photographs. Last time I checked, medical imaging displays were all carefully calibrated and had their settings locked so that mal-adjustment couldn't cause information to be lost or invisible just because the display is a bit to bright/dark or has poor colour reproduction. I'm pretty sure iPods aren't built to this quality.
Next thing you'll be telling me that an airline pilot can navigate his airliner using some free software running on his mobile phone rather than the tried and tested Aviation grade GPS devices.
Was his name Dr Nick Riviera?
Carrying around images and viewing them FROM the ipod on a computer is one thing but I don't want my radiologist to diagnose me from a 2in square screen.
There's a big difference.
Come on! this has to be a joke. Any radiologist knows that you have to have good luminencence and contrast to review certain types of medical images. This idea of throwing them on a hard disk may sound great but is impractical im most medical imaging setups. How are you going to display a 4000x3000 images on an ipod screen and get it right ?
Ok, perhaps with CT, MR and US images this may be possible, although i dont believe an ipod screen is big enough. If you connected it to a PC with a standard LCD or CRT monitor the chances are you would be able to see all of the information to diagnose the image... but the idea that this can be used to review all types of Dicom images is stupid.
I worked with radiologists for over 4 years and i dont think i have ever meet any that would go to that extent to save a few thousand dollars... especially not seeing the industry is typically refered to as a cash cow anyways.
I dont see how you can go past a DS3000 or a Web1000 with a good backend PACS if you need to review images and store masses of images.
Oh i get it... we can fit 30 studies on a 60 gig laptop... so thats ATLEAST 1 60 gig ipod a day. Apple will love this.
I can't wait until my future surgical overlords can slice me open using their Play Station Portable.
If you actually read TFA closely, you'll see that the software they wrote allows them to view the Diacom formatted images on the iPod photo. From the article:
Instead of the usual jpeg format, medical images are stored in a format called Diacom (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) so we had to create a function on the software that allowed the format to be modified so they could be visible on the iPod.
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Whats wrong with USB memory sticks?
I can say that there are a LOT of things wrong with this article. This is pre-school journalism at its best. Hear me out...
My job title is PACS Administrator, which means I run the servers, network, diagnostic systems, etc for medical imaging in Radiology and other departments in a major healthcare organization.
Let me tell you, there are A LOT of problems with something like this. Some of this will be redundant, but I'm trying to capture everything into one post. First of all, the iPod is seen as a generic external hard drive. Big deal, they made their free DICOM viewer software have the ability to export to an external drive. Second, this is a MAJOR patient confidentiality issue, and I believe is considered legal under HIPAA, but if a physician, clinician, etc lost the iPod, they could go to JAIL. I'm not kidding.
Also, they also allude to actually viewing images on the photo iPods. I cannot imagine any image that could even be useful to a non-Radiology (referring phsyician, surgeon, etc) on those screens. About the lowest quality image that is useful even for referrals or comparisons is a 2MP monitor that displays at least 1280 resolution. Anything less than that is pretty much medically worthless, and for Radiologists, you typically need a 3MP display for proper detail, not to mention special graphics hardware.
I'm not quite sure if this CNN article is a cry for publicity from the developers of OsiriX, or Apple. The product page for Osirix barely even mentions the iPod functionality (in the changelogs), yet I doubt Apple would bother publicizing this.
As for the journalistic integrity, c'mon... I mean, the reporter spelled DICOM (format for medical image storage and transfer), "Diacom". They even spell out what it stands for after that, I don't see any A's in there!
Conclusion: you should all be very scared of careless happy-go-lucky doctors and clinicians running around with your patient data on their iPod at the gym trying to see whether you have a brain tumor while jogging in the park, when someone steals their iPod and sells it on eBay!
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
sounds a bunch of doctors just wanted a to get the hospital to buy them ipods. there r cheaper solutions out there than this, but not as cool or /.worthy.
Which is illegal to do in the US. You have to pay royalties to play commercial music. You may also have to in other countries. Just fyi. The "synthiepop mozart castration" type of music exists because the music is royalty free once the initial purchase is complete.
--ngoy
Actually the article is wrong. It's 'DICOM'. Go look it up.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
Go look at the product page for OsiriX, go to screenshots, and you will find pictures (and movie clips) of medical images being VIEWED on the iPod.
To sum up, RTFA. (because it does actually say in the article as well that they can view now on the photo ipods)
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
man, I thought they actually were viewing the medical pics on the ipod... I saw an oppurtunity for ipod pr0n :o =D
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Pornographers embracing iPod:
When Apple Computer unveiled the video-capable version of its popular iPod music player this month, it trumpeted the fact that users could download Pixar short films and top music videos, along with recent episodes of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives."
But video clips of a spicier nature quickly became available as free, iPod-friendly downloads. That created an immediate problem for parents already scrambling to keep abreast of their teenagers' computer routines...........
[alk]
http://homepage.mac.com/rossetantoine/osirix/Index 2.html
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The iPod/Osirix combo is really wonderful for several reasons:
1. Osirix has a 'export' button that quickly loads selected studies (and import is just as easy).
2. The photo and video iPods allow physicians to show studies to their patients (low res is fine for this).
3. Osirix itself is a godsend to the Mac community and has become one of the best radiographic DICOM viewing program on the Mac (or any platform...and it is free!)
4. Osirix allows network connectivity to many medical devices (eg: MRI scanners) and also can be used to view the increasingly ubiquitous CD's that are now given to patients in lieu of films.
Previously I would put MRI studies on a Treo to show studies to patients and their families. Now I can do it easier with the iPod (and have a cool device to boot!)
Who thinks it'd be fucking hilarious if the doctor starts rocking out in the middle of a heart transplant? Or, more ironically, starts playing Healing Vision.
This might fly in Switzerland, but it's not going to comply with US laws.
Most medical image files I see (and I see a lot working in a clinical research field) do have HIPAA personal identifies in them.
It's not exactly illegal to do this (in the same way as it is not illegal to carry a TV out of an electronics store). You just have to pay for it. Which we do, the difference is that we are not hooking up a radio (tuned to some boring station) or one single CD, like most businesses with a similar setup do.
Any medical department that uses
The anonymizer functions in Osirix are a good step towards security but this is only of value when doing research studies over a lot of patients (like population studies). To do diagnostic work, you need to be able to identify the image set to a given patient. You don't send two three sets of images to a doctor saying, image set #1 is patient X so on and so forth. The risk of error is too great. Plus, anyone who has worked with dicom knows it's close to impossible to identify a patient by it's dicom file name (a CT slice would look like CT.1.3.45.123456.20051024.1.100.01) if the metadata has been anonymized. Whatever. Most physicians have a PC on their desk, so the tool is not accessible to them thus negating the "huge processing power" of the Mac.
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I think I'd trust my health to a scary-looking guy in native dress waiving a chicken over me before I'd go to someone who has my medical information sharing disk space with illegally downloaded mp3s.
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Well, you could have a deadly cancerous mass but my screen is scratched so I can't tell. We'll have to wait for a real diagnosis. Would you like to spend what could be the remaining minutes of your life watching an episode of "Lost"?
If that happened to me in the hospital i would've pulled the plug on life support!
An iPod being used for anything important is a scary thought. I have a 60 gig ipod photo that crashes at least as often as my windows pc. Even worse, It has completely died on me twice in the 8 months I'v had it.
The first time was roughly a month after I bought it, the hard drive died and had to be replaced. I'm not sure what the second problem is - its at the repair shop right now.
Note, I have NOT been rough on it, theres hardly a scratch on the thing.
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Over here in the US, we put MRI's on DVD's (and CD's) all of the time. Unless you are manipulating the images, the actual data burden of an MRI isn't all that high. The standard presentation form for an MRI is an approximately 13 x 19" piece of film, on which are printed around 20 "slices" of information. (Can't recall exact number at the moment). That's about 20 3 x 4 inch grey scale images. Not the last word in bandwith hogging pixel numbers.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This would never fly in the US. For this to work, some respected medical company would need to come out with a product that is exactly the same, but they charge 5 times as much for it as a Ipod. Why can't we have low cost medical equitment in the US?
I think the usage of the iPod is pretty limitless and the hype it brings will only attract more ideas.
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Does anyone else find it a bit depressing that they named the software after the Egyptian god of the dead?
I suspect quite a few people have, um, "medical" images on their iPods.
sulli
RTFJ.
Devices in a hospital setting must be frequently sanitized for the safety of patients (as well as the doctors and medical staff). I'm not familiar with how easy an iPod are to clean...
I'd also imagine there are stricter electronic interference requirements.
On a related note, nurses are generally banned from using cell phones at a hospital since they are a source of germs.
Patient: Doctor, is that an iPod in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
--Or--
Nurse: Doctor, is that an iPod Nano in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
--Or--
Doctor: Nurse, you want to see my iPod Shuffle?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
This was covered in january: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1748425,00.as p
This story should be followed up by the one about the chap who discovered that a new BMW could be used to move important medical files from one location to another. After making this remarkable discovery, the entire department quickly put in purchase orders for "medical information transit devices".
/. story the IT adminstrator purchased iPod as "boot" devices.)
The story is sort of in the "duh" catagory...chap discovers that iPod can be used to store data, justifies purchase. (There was a
As medical imaging/storage devices go...the PDAs (Axim with 640x480 & wireless) or tablets are a better choice. The TCO (total cost of ownership) savings betweeen a $300 iPod and a $2000 tablet are relatively small when you add in the security, training and deployement costs.
Here is the Osirix Discussion Group. Traffic can be quite heavy at times, but you can almost always expect a reply from other users, if not Dr Rosset himself.
UCLA radiology has been using them for storage for a while (>1 year), but only for temporary transfering of data. No onein their right mind would evaluate an image on these.
..........FULL STOP.
cd's are easier to steal, but think of it this way: if you have 100 cd's being passed around and one gets stolen, will you be more or less likely to notice it than if you're missing an ipod?
I guess I don't get it. If your doc is looking at radiologic images on his I-mac screen, run and run fast - this person should have no part in your health care if enjoy life at all. It sounds though that they're just using it as a portable HD, but any station capable of displaying these images at sufficient resolution should be on a network and able to access the Dot Mac database (which is a pretty sketchy way to store and transmit patient data - "software has a function that enables the physician to strip the image of any personal data that identifies the person, like their name, their date of birth etc. As long as that is done then it is a secure, anonymous system." Now that is also pretty frightening - it's just another place for mistakes to be made during coding and interpretation.
this article might as well of said that chewbaca is a wookie on endor.
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this application brings out an interesting point. although everyone seems to talk about ipod music, ipod photo, video ipods, etc. the most interesting things people do with ipods is to hack them to perform some particular application.
i've seen ipods hacked to be used as address books, show video (before the latest ipod), as portable boot drives, portable data storage, and now medical images. ipods also include eater egg games in their firmeware. no doubt the little mp3 players have been put to all sorts of interesting uses not in their original spec sheet.
and yet no one ever seems to talk about apple opening up the ipod for third party development. apple could and perhaps ought to open up the ipod allowing third party developers to create applications.
the things certainly have enough memory - megabytes of storage and dynamic memory is cheap and compact enough. a touch sensitive display would give it and input device more flexible than the buttons and scroll wheel alone and would not be that difficult to add.
the ipod could be kind of a stealth pda coming at users from the entertainment direction as opposed to the more utilitarian direction palm and windows pdas came from. and with the ipod's user base, applications could be more interesting including simple photo and video editors as well as games and the usual pda tools.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
IIRC, iChat uses libgiam for the AOL OSCAR compatability. And among the recent Google Summer of Code projects was adding support to Giam for the iChat ad-hoc instant messenger networks set up using Apple's Bonjour.
"You seem to be missing a major point - it's how the tool is being used, not what the tool is."
I absolutely agree, and so does my wife (she tells me this all the time...).
Read the article. The doctor had an iPod, and started using it to move large files around. That in itself isn't news. It's the additional details.
.Mac to conveniently post images - stripped of identifiers for anonymity - to protected web space for additional consultation and reference purposes.
They can take a patient's data with them and study it at the office, at home, at a colleague's office. This doesn't require an iPod.
They added an image export function to put pictures in iPod-viewable format once the iPod Photo came out. That's pretty minor, but you can use it for reference, or output it to a TV for viewing. The resolution is still lower than original quality, but I can't speak to those details.
Then they used iChat AV for full-motion video streaming to other doctors. Again, the quality is lower, but the ability to consult with other doctors in real-time with the data can be invaluable. They also used
The real imaging work can't be done on the portable because it is very demanding... it's a 3d video of sorts. A tablet might be able to do the work, but the real point isn't using the images on-the-go, it's taking the images with you or sharing them.
The costs are negligible because the equipment is there... they have the Mac to use Osirix. That means they have the iChat software. They were using their own iPods. Sure, some medical facilities might end up buying a few iPods for this use... is that so terrible? I think the additional costs of training and deployment for Windows Tablet PCs and a different DICOM viewer far outweigh the costs of iPods... if they even have to buy them. Remember, for most of the uses - excepting the iPod-viewable photos and videos - any portable drive would do.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Okay? Why is this off topic?
It's a interesting question about why a iPod is more suited to develop such things than a PDA...
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
How about this:
Create an x-ray-dock. The ipod fits into the dock, which is integrated into a big fancy monitor. to enable the display of an image, the doctor provides a thumb scan.
it could work....
"His software, called Osirix (OSS, BTW) enables medical professionals to view medical images on their iPods, saving them and the hospitals they work for thousands of dollars in expensive equipment."
How long will it take the medical equipment manufacturers to have this banned in the US? I give it less than a year.
....or a hairline fracture?
...is that I want that 80GB of .Mac storage for $99 a year.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
has been available on the Apple developer site for a while. Has some more details on the iDisk and QT integration too.r ix.html
http://developer.apple.com/business/macmarket/osi
Another friend of mine saw the link on CNN.com, and I knew then it would make it to
"News for Nerds, after CNN's blesssing".
What a quaint story. It was an interesting read, and the Doctor did a good job of cobbling together some related, and disparate technologies. However, it is going to be somewhat limited in it's use. PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications Systems) are wear the real work is unfolding in medical imaging. I work in the field. We provide practioners access to evbery image through dedicateed workstations, and web clients. We store, index, and backup all the images and data. This cute little gizmo will not displace PACS. Oh, and it will likely NEVER be used for diagnostic reading. Why? There are stringent regulatory requirements for image interpretation, image display, etc. No iPod will ever clear that, and Osirix will not, as a reader, either. Why? Too darned expensive for the two docs who created Osirix to clear those hurdles in EERY country in which they would expect that software to be used. So, neat little "Oh look what you can do with an iPod" story, but I do not expect it to gain significant ground in medical imaging.
HIPAA is a nightmare to deal with, which is one of the reasons it is so often misinterpreted. A doctor will not go to jail for unintentionally losing a device with patient data on it. All criminal penalties specified in HIPAA state that the offender must knowingly disclose patient info. If the loss is unintentional the offender would probably get a slap on the wrist.
Either way, HIPAA compliance is a pipe dream. Only a very small handful of people have been prosecuted under HIPAA, and I personally see dozens of offenses a day.
An overpriced Apple display in an article that talks abot avoiding expensive equipment is hysterical. I also suspect that the average physican already has a laptop that would serve just as well.
Remember, for most of the uses - excepting the iPod-viewable photos and videos - any portable drive would do.
One of the things about using OsiriX with an iPod is that it works as an extension of the program's database. You could use any portable drive, but I presume Apple has designed the iPod API in Xcode to work in such a way that it has advantages over a portable drive. It can synchronise with the software automatically, whereas a portable drive would require some manual steps in order for the application to use the DICOM database on the drive. I'm sure there are ways to do this automatically with a portable drive anyway, but the point is this program was written using heaps of the programming tools that are part of OS X, like Xgrid for example.
It's bloody funny, dammit! Where is the moderator's sense of humour?
Last year I had a recurring case of urticaria, hives, and usually when I went to see the Dr. they'd gone away. I took pictures of them once, and showed the doctor the photos on my camera, to help him diagnose what kind of hives they were.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.