On the Portable Remote Diagnostic Information and Telemedicine System (PoRDITS)

The explosive proliferation of networking technologies is drastically affecting operations in the health care industry. Physicians now can provide better services at lower costs through the efficient management of medical information. In recognition the importance of the interoperability of medical information, both government agencies and the private sector have made considerable investment in various medical standards, such as DICOM, HL7 and various electronic patient record systems. Among many of the standards activities, one missing element is a universal software model that would enable physicians to integrate and customize various medical information products into a complete suite for their particular needs. A software tool built on the basis of such a software model should be provably reliable, verifiable and field-configurable. It should allow instrument vendors to embed their hardware and software solutions into the tool without compromising their proprietary designs. This tool should be able to communicate and command different instruments in a consistent manner, so that new applications can be built upon well-known and well-accepted software layers. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this solution approach, we developed a portable medical information management prototype, the Portable Remote Diagnostic Information and Telemedicine System (PoRDITS).