Secure and cost-effective exchange of cardiac images over the electronic highway in the Netherlands

Today, in many catheterization labs the images are processed and stored in digital format. This creates the possibility to transfer the images electronically between an university cardiology centre and referring cardiology centres. Electronic exchange of images will reduce waiting time and costs involved with physically sending cine films or CD-ROMs to other centres. However, the electronic exchange of images poses two big challenges: 1) the safeguarding of the privacy of the patient-related information; 2) the handling of large amounts of data. These challenges can be met by using encryption algorithms and efficient data reduction methods.