How Image Exchange Breaks Down: the Image Library Perspective

• Published in: Journal of digital imaging Vol. 35; no. 4; pp. 785 - 795
• Main Authors: Roth, Christopher J., Harten, Hope H., Dewey, Matt, Dennison, Don K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01-08-2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Archives & records; Communication; Delivery of Health Care; Digital imaging; Electronic Health Records; Exchanging; Hospitals; Humans; Imaging; Infrastructure; Libraries; Library staff; Localization; Medical imaging; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Original Paper; Patients; Physicians; Radiology; Web portals; Workforce planning; Image exchange; DICOM; Standards; Interoperability
• ISSN: 0897-1889; 1618-727X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10278-022-00684-x

While in the last decade there has been significant technical infrastructure development to support standards-based image exchange through organizations like Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, Carequality, DICOM, and HL7 FHIR, the human operationalization of such infrastructure using centralized, intuitive, standards-based applications remains the cornerstone of effective and reliable electronic image exchange. Image libraries managing the highly transactional and often uncertain inflows and outflows of images have a unique perspective on the challenges of image exchange. This manuscript will summarize frequent collaboration and communication, release of information, staffing, technology, information localization, and analytics difficulties for image exchange from the perspective of the image library staff managing the transactions.