StructConsult: structured real-time wet read consultation infrastructure to support patient care

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Radiology
• Health Information Systems

Background:

• Effective physician-to-physician communication is crucial for seamless patient referrals and preventing care lapses.
• Current systems often lack robust mechanisms for sharing critical patient information between referring physicians and specialists like radiologists.
• Rapid consultation, or wet read, is a common but often inefficient process in healthcare referrals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and describe StructConsult (SC), an imaging-based system to improve physician communication for wet read consultations.
• To enhance the prevention of patient care lapses during inter-clinician referrals within the healthcare system.
• To leverage the Digital Imaging Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard for structured reporting and data retrieval.

Main Methods:

• Development of the StructConsult (SC) system, an imaging-based consultation platform.
• Utilization of a data model based on the DICOM standard for grayscale presentation state and structured reporting.
• Integration of four key information sources: patient demographics/clinical data, sentinel image capture, radiologist annotations, and consultation responses.

Main Results:

• StructConsult (SC) facilitates structured data capture and retrieval for imaging consultations.
• The system enables better communication between non-imaging specialists (PCPs, ER physicians) and radiologists.
• SC integrates with Picture Archiving Systems to add enhanced functionality for improved patient care.

Conclusions:

• StructConsult (SC) offers a novel solution for improving physician-to-physician communication in imaging consultations.
• The system's DICOM-based data model supports efficient data mining and recall, crucial for patient care continuity.
• Implementing SC can enhance Picture Archiving Systems, leading to better patient management and reduced care gaps.