Traditional text-only versus multimedia-enhanced radiology reporting: referring physicians' perceptions of value

The aim of this study was to evaluate referring physicians' perceptions of multimedia-enhanced radiology reporting (MERR) as an alternative to traditional text-only radiology reporting. MERR supplements text-only reports by embedding user-friendly interactive hyperlinks to key images and graphically plotting target lesion size longitudinally over time.

Of 402 physicians responding to a web-based survey, 200 (50 each medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, neurosurgeons, and pulmonologists) practicing in the United States fulfilled criteria to complete an online survey with questions focusing on satisfaction with current text-only reports and the perceived value of image- and data-enriched reporting.

The mean respondent age was 46 years, with a mean of 15 years in posttraining clinical practice (85% men; 47% from academic medical centers). Although 80% were satisfied with the format of their current text-only radiology reports, 80% believed that MERR would represent an improvement. The most commonly reported advantages of MERR were "improved understanding of radiology findings by correlating images to text reports" (86%) and "easier access to images while monitoring progression of a disease/condition" (79%). Of the 28% of physicians with concerns about MERR implementation, the most common were that it was "too time intensive" (53%) and "the clinic workflow does not allow itself to view reports in such a fashion" (42%). Physicians indicated a strong increased likelihood of preferentially referring patients to (80%) and recommending peers to (79%) facilities that offer MERR.

Most specialist referring physicians believe that interactive image- and data-embedded MERR represents an improvement over current text-only radiology reporting. Compared with current report formatting, most would preferentially refer patients and peers to facilities offering more meaningful image- and graphically enriched reporting platforms.