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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...
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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?
There is nothing here that couldn't be done cheaper and better on other platforms. The iPod/Apple angle is just a gimmick ...
If you read the artical it states the store and run the diacom images off the ipod but doesnt say naything baout viewing the images on the ipod screan. After reading the artical i intrepreted it as the ipod is a cheap portable hard drive.
Oh man I love the redundant moderation. Come upon a story with no comments, post something and then come back later to find you've posted redundant info. Ummm, OK then. See, this is why when I moderate I only moderate people UP instead of wasting points moderating people down for stupid shit like being "redundant". Why don't you find the insightful posts and moderate those people up? Read the moderation FAQ next time.
*sigh*
RTFA:
'After we figured out that the iPods were a practical way of carrying these images, Apple brought out the photo iPod a few months later. That meant the images could also be viewed on the devices.'
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.
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.
And don't forget that since the iPod has a real Harddisk with USB2/Firewire they get quite acceptable transfer rates, I don't think a PDA could compete in this area.
The third argument for an iPod is tight integration: they use Macs, so the iPod should fit perfectly. From my experience, most PDAs can't be mounted as a diskdrive whereas the iPod acts as an external harddrive.
If leaked, the header info that comes with a DICOM formatted data set easily violates privacy at a level sufficient to trigger a $15k slap on the wrist and/or 6months jail time.
Ahh, another sucker who bought the consultants' scare stories... You don't get the big fines and jail times for inadvertent disclosures. Those are explicitly reserved for deliberate disclosure for gain, in other words selling medical records under the table. It's of course still good to be concerned about the potential for accidental disclosures, but as another poster pointed out, they strip the DICOM headers before saving to the iPods.
Portable data is something that is of great interest to NIH. They're not scared of it at all, actively encouraging it, in fact. There's at least half a dozen SBIRs out there now on the very topic (of which my company is placing bids). One of the things that is of major interest to them is Informed Consent. That is, NIH wants to have PCs in every doctor's surgery and have them gathering medical information, putting it into a simple to view application and sending it home with the patient. The first target is MRI and CAT scan data - those very DICOM images you're talking about.
Another side to this is that NIH/NLM are seriously looking at how to combine large scale medical databases. That also is feeding into this desire to distribute patient data to the patient. They have a number of projects that have been funded for the last couple of years for creating huge single-subject, national level databases, particularly of research data. Now they have a couple of open-bid SBIRs on providing integration applications for those. That is, someone should be able to combine the virus database, with the visible human data, with the heart disease databases into a single visual system. This can then either be used for teaching/training, general education, or combined with individual patient records on that take-home CD so that they can see how the individual compares to The Masses(TM). We're doing a lot of this work in combination with UW here in Seattle.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Big deal, they made their free DICOM viewer software have the ability to export to an external drive.
No, if you bothered to read before posting you'd see that Osirix has a button on it specifically for exporting to and importing from the iPod. Yes, technically the iPod is acting as a firewire drive, but the software has a special interface specifically for dealing with the iPod that makes using the iPod much easier than reading/writing files on an external disk.
Second, this is a MAJOR patient confidentiality issue
Wrong again. My girlfriend is a surgical resident and she brings home CT and MRI films all the time to prepare for the next day's cases. There is no difference between bringing home digital radiology data and bringing home the actual films. In fact, films are less private because you can just hold them up to the light and see the patient's name.
if a physician, clinician, etc lost the iPod, they could go to JAIL.
Wrong yet again. There is no criminal liability for losing patient data. There can be criminal liability for gross negligence, in theory, but carrying films home would never qualify as gross negligence.
I mean, the reporter spelled DICOM (format for medical image storage and transfer), "Diacom".
Yeah, because typos never, ever happen. Ever.
Conclusion: you should all be very scared of careless happy-go-lucky doctors and clinicians running around with your patient data
Conclusion: Parent poster is an idiot and a fearmonger. No, you should not be scared any more than you were scared before that bullshit HIPAA law got passed in the first place.
Radiologists print X-Rays out and store them in unlocked, unencrypted manila folders. They even put them in their cars and take them home to write their reports. HIPAA laws aren't violated (as long as they don't show them to other people), so what's the worry?