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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."
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.
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.
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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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...
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.
Exactly. Yet another fellow physician stores DICOM files on removable media. This time the media brand is "iPod", and thus it gets on the frontpage of Slashduh.
Idiocy.
And Osirix is a Free equivalent to the Osiris DICOM handler. It has nothing to do with "enabling medical professionals to view medical images on their iPods". Regardless of what imaging and analysis software you use (and you use it on a PC/workstation!), it doesn't give a crap about the trademark of your storage media!
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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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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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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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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.
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!
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Let's try to interpret people to mean something that's not incredibly unreasonable. Yes, Switzerland doesn't have the specific law referred to as HIPAA. She does have medical privacy laws nonetheless. These would almost certainly affect the use of the iPod in medicine. You shouldn't be so focused on a small error in the GP that you ignore the broader point about the conern for medical privacy. If someone said to me, "How could doing X be legal in Switzerland? The Banking Act prohibits it." I wouldn't say "hahahahhahahahahaha you idiot that law doesn't apply there!", I would say something like "Well, that's just a US law, but the relevant Swiss regulations say that ..."
That would probably save a bunch of redundant posts and back-and-forth. Just a thought.
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Come on, this is a puff piece about the ipod. The exact same thing could be done on a number of devices, including mobile phones, PDAs, notebooks all that cost less than the 1000s of dollars quoted in the article.
It is not even using the ipod in a way different to how it is supposed to be used, except for the fact that medical images are being stored rather than other images.
DVDs might these days
But then you have to wait several times as long to burn the DVD vs. copy to HD.
And a DVD would be harder to carry around.
Plus, IMO, the HD solution is more re-usable, even compared to DVD-RW media.
Other factors for the iPod would include the ability to add voice notes/dictation to go along with the images. Something a "generic" external drive wouldn't work well for.
Honestly for a Doctors office, a mac mini and other needed hardware are probably worth the investment if they need to share this data. I am sure it would be cheaper than dedicated hardware. Probably by an order of magnitude ($1,000 vs $10,000 to $50,000)
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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"?
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.
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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.
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