Image Sharing for Medical Professionals and the Citizen

Practical example and current challenges

• Medical images are an important basis for decisions on the treatment of patients with illnesses or accidents. In many situations, a patient needs to be able to transport images in a digital way, to consult another doctor for a second opinion or to another location for treatment. If this is not enabled, patient examinations need to be repeated (avoidable costs, avoidable radi-ation exposure).
• Today, the digital exchange of medical images is complex, costly and in many cases not even possible. Access to medical images for treating physicians is often difficult, particularly for images acquired in different hospitals or locations. Also, for the patients themselves, the access to their medical images is difficult, regardless of their location.
• The use case presents a secure, scalable and easy to use infrastructure for the cross-company exchange of images that brings the right data to the right people at the right time. The foundation for this idea is the IHE standard ("Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise") known as "Cross Enterprise Document Sharing for Images" (XDS-i).

What added value does the "GAIA-X project" offer?

• GAIA-X can provide a secure and scalable infrastructure to enable the exchange of medical images on a national and pan-European level.
• The standardized GAIA-X infrastructure and governance, fully compliant with security and privacy provisions, helps to simplify the deployment of image sharing infrastructures. Existing XDS-i infrastructures can be integrated as nodes into the GAIA-X infrastructure.
• GAIA-X can accelerate harmonization of the identification, authentication, encryption and data retention of medical data. The introduction of the required technology can be simplified and drives the adoption at scale and at lower costs.

Use Case Team

• Bert Verdonck – Philips
• Frank Laarakker – Philips