Roland Sebastian Talanow MD,PhD, Presenter: Nothing to Disclose

Especially general radiologists who are working solo face often a situation where they are in need for a peer consultation for a difficult case. This becomes not only a workflow issue since time consuming literature research might delay the workflow but also a medical-legal issue if providing potentially an inaccurate report. A solution is desired where radiologists who are in need for a case consultation receive such in a timely manner.

We developed a tool that allows radiologists taking images from the current case study and sending it to a dedicated section in a protected community of over 10.000 Radiology professionals. This community has been used for several years for case consultation and opinions about cases are usually provided within a few minutes to hours. No installation is needed and thus can be used in an environment with limited user rights. The program mask is short and intuitive and provides several options for taking the image from the workstation, a title, short description where a question can be placed and optional case relevant parameters. With one mouse click the case is sent to the community. The user may choose to display their name or stay anonymous. As soon as a peer provides an opinion, the user will be notified via email. The user may also discuss this case with peers in the protected community to get more insight.

We approached the challenge of exporting cases from a workstation by developing a solution that is vendor-independent and allows taking images directly from the screen and sending them through an interface to a protected community of Radiology professionals. This program however offers the flexibility to be integrated in other communities or hospitals and allows even larger health care systems to provide a quick case consult without the need to purchase expensive software.

We provide a free clinical tool for radiologists that allows receiving quickly and easily consultations from peers for their difficult cases. This tool helps especially solo radiologists or radiologists in remote locations improving their workflow and decreasing medical-legal liablilty by increasing the accuracy of the reports.  

Talanow, R, A Free Vendor Independent Tool for Case Consultation in a Cloud-based Environment.  Radiological Society of North America 2012 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, November 25 - November 30, 2012 ,Chicago IL. http://archive.rsna.org/2012/12025827.html