President's Message

October 2007 (v1.7)
Rob Limbaugh - President

The End Is Near!

Of the year, anyway… My, how the time does indeed fly! Kids are back to school, the stores already have Holiday decorations for sale, and school activities are again in full swing! It’s already time to close up the pool, finish up yard work, and start winterizing. Perhaps this year I’ll actually string up Holiday lights outside the house… we’ll see!

WYSIWYG – What You Suggest Is What You Get

The September General Meeting was very interesting, to say the least. While it got off to a bit of a slow start (my fault), things got interactive rather quickly. After ‘Ask DACS’, Chris took a few moments to poll the audience for suggestions of what topics the audience would like to see presented or offered as some sort of workshop. If you could pick three topics for the coming year, what would they be? There were several great ideas, but I’m sure we didn’t scratch the surface. Please send any ideas to Chris. Don’t be bashful and don’t assume your topic ideas have been suggested by someone else. If there’s something you have knowledge about and would like to present to the rest of us, please don’t hesitate step forward and be recognized!

During the September General Meeting, one topic suggestion from the audience was in regards to the upcoming “Microsoft Home Server” product. That was quickly followed with a “Why would you need one [a server at home]?” question. Good suggestion. Great question! Various answers flew around. More on this later…

What Did We Miss?

For those who missed Ed Heere’s presentation, there were several gems buried within the information he shared. CoActiv, LLC, handles medical imaging for hospitals, doctors offices, and even veterinary facilities. From a technical standpoint, I find the design of their system and it’s interaction to be genius… from the turnkey approach to the end-to-end resiliency and easy of use is certainly impressive!

Everything appeared to be designed to virtually eliminate end user frustration and minimize support overhead. From what he showed, it looked to me that if you can’t access the data, either the computer you’re using is messed up or your internet connection is down. A turnkey architect could learn from his technology model and examples, in my opinion.

The explanations of PACS imaging were just right—not too heavy into the technical detail, but just enough to point out the pros and cons of analog versus digital film. As if showing how changing image properties (zoom, contrast, remove areas) weren’t enough, he brought out the eye-popping 3D effects generated on the fly from image slices. Simply amazing! Not so much because of the end result, but more so because the end result was built on-the-fly from ‘real’ (that is, ‘random’) data from the scan of a real set of scans!

OK, so all that is great. But what does it mean to me? Since I’m a systems administrator, I took great appreciation in the overall architecture of the system and even asked Ed a few questions at the Pig SIG about some of the inner workings. I’m not a medical professional, but I do interact with several people I know in the medical profession (including my mother, an RN), so it gives another thing to talk about. Beyond that, I didn’t really seem to get much out of it on a personal level. That was until about a week after—that’s when it hit me!

X-Ray Vision

There were two things that would serve me well when I went for a routine chest X-Ray as part of my physical about a week after the September General Meeting. As the technician was switching film cartridges, I remembered that the new digital film is used just like the old film was and looks identical. This allows PACS imaging systems to be put in place immediately without requiring all new hardware to be purchased. Armed with this information, I asked the X-Ray tech, “Is that digital or regular film?” To my delight, the response was, “Digital. We’re all digital now.”

The moment of realization couldn’t have been brighter! Ed had also pointed out that the cost of copies is negligible and all a patient has to do is ask for a CD/DVD media of the scans which can be created right there before leaving. Needless to say, I left with my CD of my X-Rays, elated that I was unknowingly armed with powerful information gleaned from a seemingly periphery presentation.

Bringing It All Home

Yippee! Here I am, able to print 5x7’s and wallets of my own X-Rays. Now I can have my radiology image as a background or screen saver and nobody would realize it was actually me. While that is certainly a bit festive for Halloween, it’s probably too morbid for practical application. Or is it? Does it really matter? What major value is there in having ones X-Rays? So what if I can now do all this?

Letting all of it sink in for a bit, another recollection bubbled to the surface of my mind that Ed pointed out—HIPAA only requires data to be stored for seven years—‘analog’ or ‘digital’. What this means is that if you broke your leg today and had a complication ten years from now, there may not be an X-Ray to refer to! Anything done more than years ago may have been already been discarded. This bothers me because I had always been under the impression that medical institutions had to keep copies of your patient data.

So, just to make a quick and simple recap of the personally relevant part: Medical Digital Imaging provides a way for the patient to easily participate in the storage and distribution of their own medical images.

From now on, I’m requesting copies of all my radiology exams and will only be seen by those with PACS systems, this way I can ensure a copy of my X-Rays exists 20 years from now.

Back to the ‘Server’

Each person has to justify their own technology needs. For me, I’m getting rid of paper file cabinets and going digital. Not only will I get more physical storage space in my office, but I won’t have to worry about my paper files. I’ll now add my radiology images to an appropriate folder structure. To round things out, I use encrypted over-the-web backups for ‘continuous backup protection’.

If my media player comes up missing, I just re-load a new one. If my paper-based files get destroyed, I just refer to digital. If my file server is destroyed, I just get another box and start restoring from the web. If my doctor purges my X-Rays, then I will still be able to get them.

Of course, you don’t have to wait for a vendor to put out a ‘server’ product… the technology exists in the here-and-now to set up your own data repository with off-site automatic backups.

So, now, who needs a server at home?

ROB LIMBAUGH
relimbaugh@dacs.org