So far, medical facilities, not patients, have been the primary end-users in the ongoing transition to cloud-based medical information exchange. But results from a new study show that, once patients are more fully included, they will be just as satisfied as medical professionals have been.

Patients in a beta project found cloud-based sharing "a faster, more efficient way to store and distribute their medical images than current options." Current options include CDs, still the most common way to share radiology files despite a host of drawbacks and limitations previously discussed in this space.

The patients are taking part in Image Share, a project of the  Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). The society describes Image Share as "a network created to enable radiologists to share medical images with patients using personal health record (PHR) accounts."

Image Share is administered by RSNA and includes about 600 patients from five sites: The Mount Sinai Medical Center (Miami Beach, Fla.); University of California - San Francisco; University of Chicago Medical Center; Mayo Clinic; and the University of Maryland Medical Center (Baltimore, Md.).

The project works very much like eMix. Once patients create an account and password, they are allowed access into the system. It enables them to import their images and reports into their PHR. The transfer is secure because the information is encrypted when it is sent and remains that way until it arrives in the patient’s account.

David Mendelson, MD, FACR, is Chief of Clinical Informatics at The Mount Sinai Medical Center and Chief Clinical Investigator for RSNA Image Share. He has stated that cloud-based medical information exchange is "the next revolution in digital imaging." He describes numerous advantages of the approach including giving patients ownership over their records and making radiology information more accessible to physicians.

Plus, he says "it decreases unnecessary radiation exposure that can be caused by physicians’ ordering duplicate examinations due to records not being easily available."

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.