Abstracto

Additional Research Needed for A Centralized Cloud-Based Radiology Imaging System in The United States Health Care System

Yana Puckett

The United States healthcare system continues to use outdated methods of imaging transfer from one hospital to another, such as compact disks. When patients are transferred from outside hospitals, the receiving clinicians often lose imaging, are unable to upload imaging, or receive imaging incompatible with different computer systems. This results in significant transfer delays, missing diagnostic information, loss of imaging, unnecessary irradiation to patients, and increased cost to the healthcare system affecting millions of children, adults, and elderly in the United States receiving healthcare.
Such issues are prevalent in the hospitals of the United States and pose a host of safety, medico-legal, security, and financial concerns related to quality control and resource utilization. Cloud-based radiology is widely available. Utilization of a nationalized cloud-based radiology system will result in tremendous health care cost savings, improvement in patient safety, and increase efficiency in the healthcare delivery. However, more research needs to be performed by Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality (AHQR) on the efficiency of the current method of medical radiologic image handling across the United to strengthen the argument for a centralized cloud-based radiology system.