Patient access to Radiology

e-Patient Dave asks Is “Gimme my damn data” coming to radiology at last??

Radiology (all modalities of Imaging) have had many ways to provide patients with their Damn data. The CD that e-Patient Dave refer to is an example that is heavily used. It is not clear from e-Patient Dave's post if the CD he is given is "DICOM Compliant", if it was then the viewer on the CD is not the only viewer available. There are many DICOM viewers you could use. Further these are full DICOM objects so they can be imported into a PACS or even HealthVault. Where they can be fully manipulated by those tools.

IHE has profile of this Portable Data for Imaging (PDI)  This profile is compatible for the wider profile for any Documents on media Cross-Enterprise Document Media Interchange (XDM)

Which is the profile recommended to be used to carry content by the Direct Project.

Thus, the whole space of Healthcare Information can be put on interoperable media and provided to the patient on removable media or e-Mail.

Note that there are equivilant and compatible solutions for a local Health Information Exchange (XDS), and NationWide Health Information Exchange (XCA).

All using the same document, and same metadata, and fully specified for Privacy and Security. What is lacking is the Mandate -- the "Damn" part of the story.