There is a need of a image-enabled patient portal to store and allow second opinions.
Why?
Because of consumerism in healthcare and patients are taking control of their health records, and also insurance companies needs a portal where to organize, store and retrieve cases for reimbursement.
Until today only a few patient portals are image-enabled in the web; only reports, not the images themselves are available. It is important to identify new start-ups with dynamic web portal that also allow second opinions to our staff of radiologists, but also globally allow invitation to third parties providers. Patient portal are passive as a drop to download reports, but patient need to take advantage of visiting these portals, for explanations, images, video, almost as sort of a Radiology Interactive Wikipedia for understanding their results and impact in their life, by identifying the next logical step.
In summary, managing medical images in the cloud has been a key technological innovation for the storage of large imaging sets and easy access to patient priors through automated matching.
Defining a new a project aimed at allow patients to upload, store and forward their difficult radiological/clinical cases for a second opinion in a secure and personalized communication channel for doctors with their patients over web and mobile, as following:
“If you have had an advanced diagnostic imaging study, such as an MRI, CT scan, or PET-CT, and you have questions about or want confirmation of the study, results or diagnosis you have been given, then a second opinion consultation may give you the answers that you need, images, web-sources for leaning implications of your health and 5 min rounds of Zoom with our radiologists.”
A top second opinion/patient digital portal as minimum need to offer:
-An explanation of your imaging study.
-An expert opinion about the findings and results of your study.
-A confirmation of your diagnosis or a differing opinion.
-Necessary information to make informed decisions when discussing your imaging results with your treating physician.
-Deny or grant reimbursements for insurances companies, while decreasing fraud.
-A teleconference between patients, relatives and radiologists
Perhaps more importantly, obtaining a second opinion of patient imaging study can also empower doctor/insurance with more information about a particular condition, injury or disease, which can give peace of mind and a sense of direction.
When it comes to getting a second opinion, turning to a highly-experienced and highly-specialized radiologist is today in the pandemic era more critical to getting the information and answers that patients seek. We cant wait for an expert radiologists will provide service with a high-level diagnostic interpretation and written report, discuss a case and imaging results with the user, explaining a diagnostic imaging study, and answering live questions thoroughly.
Patients or insurance companies can buy service and be connected to their doctors for communication.
At the end, doctor should be paid for his time spending with each patient, and patient portals will die unless the era of interactive patient portal (digital opinions) in radiology arrives.
