Acquisition and review of diagnostic images for use in medical research and medical testing examinations via the internet

With the continued centralization of medical care into large, regional centers, there is a growing need for a flexible, inexpensive, and secure system to rapidly provide referring physicians in the field with the results of the sophisticated medical tests performed at these facilities. Furthermore, the medical community has long recognized the need for a system with similar characteristics to maintain and upgrade patient case sets for oral and written student examinations. With the move toward "filmless" radiographic instrumentation, the widespread and growing use of digital methods and the Internet, both of these processes can now be realized. This article describes the conceptual development and testing of a protocol that allow users to transmit, modify, remotely store and display the images and textual information of medical cases via the Internet. We also discuss some of the legal issues we encountered regarding the transmission of medical information; these issues have had a direct impact on the implementation of the results of this project.