American College of Radiology Direct Image Transfer Best Practices

Medical image transfers used to be conducted by burning images onto CDs, a method that can be both time-consuming and inefficient.  Jonas Rydberg, MD at the Indiana University Health (IUH) Methodist Hospital spearheaded a project to create and promote a cloud-based system of image transfer.  

Best Practices

• Driven people - As long as you have a couple of people to drive the project forward, you don’t need a big, formal decision from the C-suite.
• Securing a hosting vendor - A vendor had to be chosen to host the cloud server.  Keeping costs low was a priority, and ultimately the transfer costs were actually less than CD handling cost.
• Taking physician needs into account - The system was designed to eliminate the need for physicians to log into the vendor's site, making the system more convenient.
• Encouraging hospitals to join the cloud - Benefits had to be emphasized and outside hospitals had to be assured that their system security would not be compromised.