A level I trauma center that covers the northern part of Israel, Rambam performs a large number of emergency department CT exams daily. One on-call resident reports all the CT exams performed between 3 p.m. and 7 a.m. the next day, a caseload that most days averages 50 to 60 exams per shift, said presenter Dr. Roni Shreter. Of these, 50% to 70% are brain CT exams.
The resident sometimes needs to get the opinion of an attending physician, who is able to view exams on his or her home computer via a virtual private network (VPN) connection. However, this requires on-call attending physicians to be in the vicinity of a computer with an Internet connection to the hospital, Shreter said.
As a result, the research team wanted to investigate whether portable tablet devices such as the iPad would allow attending physicians to have more freedom of movement without compromising reading quality. Three neuroradiologists read 134 consecutive brain CT exams using the iPad and Carestream Health's Light-Viewer, a Web-based image viewer for tablets.
They found that the radiologists could use the iPad as a tool for viewing CT exams with a high level of confidence, and the images viewed are of high diagnostic quality, she said.
"With the iPad, on-call advice can be given from any location where an Internet connection can be achieved," Shreter said.
