At the NIH, these hyperlinks are included in radiology reports on a regular clinical basis. They're used not only for patients in clinical trials, but also for infectious disease and other research protocols conducted at the NIH Clinical Center, according to presenter Dr. Les Folio of NIH.
NIH teamed up with Carestream on a PACS upgrade that incorporates the ability to embed hyperlinks, as well as tables and graphs, into the radiology report. The upgrade (Vue PACS 12.0) also added features for lesion identification and quantification, according to the group. Clicking on the hyperlinked measurement in the report opens up the annotated measurement in that particular CT slice and series.
A paper by the NIH group published in the October 2015 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology found that radiologists and oncologists preferred having these links in the reports. In a pilot study presented at RSNA 2015, the researchers will also share that the multimedia report led to an average of nearly nine minutes in time savings for the oncologist to assess tumor burden.
"Although the pilot results we will present at RSNA are from small numbers of oncology patients, we have continued to use the hyperlinks universally now since they obviously save time," Folio told AuntMinnie.com. "When a radiologist opens a prior report that is not hyperlinked and has several measurements that have to be hunted for, we are disappointed since it takes more time to find them. We are becoming 'spoiled' and are excited when we have prior reports that contain hyperlinks."
Because it may take some time before electronic medical record (EMR) software and patient portals can display the images, tables, and graphs within the report, the researchers have been generating separate tumor reports for select oncologists and their patients in clinical trials. The goal is to eventually manage all tumor measurements in PACS, eliminating handwriting on paper forms to be later typed into the EMR and/or cancer database, Folio said.
"When younger generations of residents and fellows see this capability, I believe they wonder why this has not happened before [and] will likely come to expect this type of interactive multimedia report," he said.
