Quality assurance with teleradiology

Teleradiology offers many applications for quality assurance in medicine. The spectrum reaches from electronic consultations in emergency or special cases and double reading - along with new models of cooperative work and medical networks - to technical quality assurance and integration into inter-institutional and patient controlled health records. Regional teleradiology networks based on server concepts can fulfill the developping technical and organisational requirements. The increasing mobility arising from smaller radiological equipment and improved accessibility to experts with minimized visualisation and reporting systems will change the radiological world of tomorrow, especially in combination with the usage of knowledge based systems in reference data bases and computer assisted diagnosis (CAD). Teleradiology by itself must be liable to quality assurance measurements to prevent unneccesary radiation exposure or danger to the doctor patient relation.