gms | German Medical Science

Ophthalmological diagnoses are mainly supported by medical images, which are essential for timely patient treatment and preventing blindness. Generally, different ophthalmology services in Chile store images in a shared network folder, on a Compact Disc, or other means, causing limited storage capacity, loss of exams, patient information exposure, and limited access to images. This project proposes a pilot information system for storing and managing medical images integrated with the electronic medical record, which was implemented in the ophthalmology department of the Hospital San José (Chile). Interoperability standards such as Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and Health Level 7 (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) were used, and Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) was used as the image manager. Mirth Connect and Ginkgo CADx were used for testing, and a Likert-scale survey was conducted to measure the success of the implementation in terms of quality parameters (structure, processes, and results).

As results, standardized messaging of DICOM and HL7 FHIR for ophthalmology was obtained. In addition, a cross-sectional architecture was built to transform JPG or PNG images to DICOM from modalities to the PACS server. Currently, ophthalmological images at Hospital San José can be viewed on a web viewer. Finally, the survey of users showed more than 70% approval of the project. In the future, the aim is to improve this workflow to implement it in other hospitals that use non-standardized methods for storing ophthalmological images, and in turn, it can be complemented with teleophthalmology and artificial intelligence.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.