Federated PACS Registry for Distributed Patient Data Sharing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Federated healthcare organizations face challenges in integrating Picture Archiving Communication Systems (PACS) across multiple hospital sites for efficient data sharing, as existing systems struggle to manage and retrieve patient records and images across distributed environments effectively.
Innovation Solution
A federated PACS system is implemented, utilizing a central data server and global patient and study location registries to integrate local PACS deployments, allowing for data sharing through protocols like HL7 and DICOM, and storing only location information to manage database size, with optional timestamp and metadata storage for efficient query results.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If patient records and images are stored across multiple distributed hospital sites, then data sharing capability is improved, but system complexity and difficulty of managing distributed environments increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a central data server as an intermediary that coordinates communication between distributed hospital sites. This server manages the federated PACS network, handling poll requests and responses to locate patient records across sites without requiring direct peer-to-peer communication between all sites, thereby reducing system complexity while maintaining data sharing capability
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a universal data model that standardizes patient record structures across all distributed hospital sites. This universal model allows different sites with varying local systems to interoperate through common protocols and data formats, enabling data sharing without requiring customization at each site
2Loss of information
If all patient records are aggregated from multiple distributed sites, then complete patient data is obtained, but network traffic and time required to locate records increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary indexing of patient records at each distributed site, where records are pre-tagged with location information and organizational metadata. When a query is initiated, the system can quickly locate records using these pre-established indexes rather than searching through all records at all sites, significantly reducing retrieval time while ensuring complete data aggregation
Solution Approach 2:
The patent divides the distributed healthcare system into autonomous segments (individual hospital sites), each maintaining its own patient records locally. This segmentation allows parallel searching across multiple sites simultaneously and enables the system to aggregate only relevant records rather than transferring all data, reducing network traffic and retrieval time
3Adaptability or versatility
If PACS data is integrated across a federated healthcare organization, then data sharing across the organization is improved, but database size and storage requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only essential location information and metadata from patient records to store centrally in the federated PACS system, while the actual patient images and detailed records remain stored locally at each hospital site. This extraction approach enables organization-wide data sharing through centralized coordination while avoiding the exponential growth of centralized storage requirements
Data Source
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AI summary
A system having a local image storage element storing patient studies indexed by a local patient identifier, a local identity storage element storing a local identity list including a global patient identifier corresponding to each of a plurality of patients having studies stored on the local image storage element and one or more of the local patient identifiers corresponding to each of the patients, the local identity list being a subset of a global identity list stored remotely from the local identity storage element and a local location storage element storing a local index of the patient studies stored on the local image storage element and further patient studies stored on further local image storage elements for each of the plurality of patients, the index including a storage location of each study and the corresponding global patient identifier, the local index being a subset of a global index stored remotely.