System and method for creating and rendering DICOM structured clinical reporting via the internet

Abstract

The assembly and communications of a generic reporting engine for offering clinical structured reports using the Internet in an encrypted manner is provided. This method of rendering structured reports employs a DICOM Structured Reporting (SR) software database engine that maps clinical report data into a clinical structured reporting data format using a Report Editor Plug-in which is responsible for constructing the report editor GUI, for parsing the DICOM SR report to show it in the Report Editor window and to store the report content created in the GUI to the DICOM SR format. The report engine can be configured with any number of software plug-ins, so totally different ways of acquiring user input may be implemented. The current invention implements the software plug-ins using a tree-like GUI. The current implementation of this plug-in is based on DICOM SR pull model which is considered more feasible to control its presentation form, but the reporting engine allows for implementation of push model report editor plug-ins. Nothing in this novel approach to clinical reporting prevents the application from implementing a report editor from editing any DICOM SR report in a generic way, like recognizing a report from voice dictation. The Reporting Engine of the present invention provides a way for the plug-ins to recognize if they are able to open the report or not. It can be done either by software plug-ins' report introspection or the process is configurable in the using the invention's reporting engine. The novel reporting engine provides a way of configuring a Report Editor Plug-in, so with one generic plug-in one may have many report templates just by configuring the plug-in. The currently implemented plug-in uses this possibility to define the report definition and GUI tree in a configuration file.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to a system and method of creating and rendering structured clinical reports over the Internet. Particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for creating and rendering structured clinical reports, such as DICOM Structured Reports (DSR), using a Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP / IP) for connecting computers to the Internet. TCP / IP is the basic communication protocol for the Internet. The present invention allows users, such as health care providers, to access diagnostic information and render clinical reports using a computer that is connected to the Internet, or world wide web (WWW), through an encrypted connection. The invention permits the users to view clinical and diagnostic patient information over a wide area network (WAN) using a secure connection over the Internet from any computer. The present invention uses any computer and does not require a traditional, designated clinical ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

The outcome of these organization's advancements pertaining to standardizing the transfer of clinical information is the result of historical frustration to effectively share data between proprietary information systems and DICOM imaging modalities (for example, ultrasound machines, X-ray machines, CT scan devices, nuclear imaging devices, etc.), such as not being able to communicate and transfer common measurements and information for clinical use.

These methods either delay the report processing time or limit the physician to using only designated workstations solely for this purpose.

These reporting methods often result in furthering the variability in producing accurate reports, limit the workflow, are inefficient, or are not cost effective.

To confound the variability in clinical reporting, DICOM modalities often utilized proprietary coding schemas for labeling the clinical information, which results in complicating, if not comprising, the integration of this data with additional information systems used by medical professionals.

However, while the Internet provides medical professionals access to this information over the public communications network, traditional imaging modalities along with their software architectures do not enable medical professionals to remotely render a clinical structured report, particularly in a DICOM Structured Report format.

While these systems are expanding in the marketplace, most clinical reporting technologies are limited to local area networks and do not enable the remote rendering of clinical structured reports over the Internet.

Many inventors have attempted to solve these problems by allowing the medical professionals to only view a completed clinical report over the Internet using a VPN or SSL connection; these methods do not permit the user to create and render[MK1] a DICOM Structured Report format of a clinical report over the Internet.

However, these technologies employ DICOM SR standard for procedure reports only, and do not take an advantage of DSR for creating diagnostic reports.

They do not enable a user to render DSR clinical reports, build new DSR report templates (example, transthoracic echocardiography report, obstetrical report, etc.), store data obtained from OCR data into the DSR format, or alter (customize) the graphical user interface (GUI) for creating and amending DICOM structured reports.

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