Teleimage: An Integrated Approach for Secure and Web-based Exchange of Medical Images and Reports

Radiological examinations are of essential importance in treatment processes. Usually, the medical images which are produced in a radiological institute are subsequently delivered to the assigning physician or to another medical specialist respectively. This is in general accomplished postally or even the patients. The duration for this transmission can be dramatically reduced by applying an integrated use of ICT and furthermore the quality of the care processes can be improved. Thereby relevant legal requirements and standards for the realization must be carefully taken into consideration. In a research project between the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences and Siemens AG Austria, the radiological workflow has been analyzed in detail and the system Teleimage has been developed and implemented to fully digitize this workflow. One major criterion for the implementation of Teleimage was the web-based exchange of medical data whereas the task of highest priority was the protection of patient related data. Thereby, the security concept was realized solely by means of state of the art cryptographic protocols and does not rely on any application layer mechanisms at the provider's site. In particular, there are no possibilities to compromise content data during transmission as well as in the Document Repository. Consequently, the protection of patient's privacy can be guaranteed without negatively influencing the performance of the Teleimage system.