TCmed - A secure telecollaboration network for medical professionals including workflow support and patient participation

Telecollaboration between medical professionals is well established for images and covering medical domains like radiology, cardiology or pathology. While images profit from functionality of the DICOM standard the exchange of non-DICOM objects like documents or reports lacks support and in particular workflow integration with existing legacy systems. Electronic health records serve for managing images, documents and reports but their spreading varies as well as the support of standardized interfaces. This paper presents a light-weight approach for establishing telecollaboration supporting images, documents and reports. It pays particular attention to process integration with legacy systems by relying on standards like DICOM and HL7. In addition, telecooperation is extended to allow patient participation by accessing and providing data. The approach has been implemented and is in routine use.