Abstract
According to Taiwan’s legislation pertaining to the protection of electronic data, the creators of electronic medical records (EMR) are solely responsible for the security of EMR. However, actual implementations that fulfill the security standards and requirements for electronic medical record systems are still lacking. Most EMR created from picture archive and communication system are not considered secure, as security protection mechanisms have not yet been granted legal status. This paper describes the details of establishing a digital signature system using Taiwan health professional cards. A digital signature system has been included to ensure quality assurance (QA) operations are controlled by technicians, and reporting capabilities have been provided for radiologist. Six imaging modalities and eight types of radiology reports have also been included in the system. Results indicate that the process of creating QA signatures does not have an adverse effect on the workflow of the facility, requiring less time for the signing and verification of radiology reports. This system has already been used routinely online in a real clinical setting for more than 2 years.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the technical support and data collecting provided by Mr. Wen-Jen Hsieh, Mr. Wei-Chung Chen and Mr. Yao-Yi Chen. This work was supported by the Department of Health and the National Science Council of Taiwan under Grant NSC 97-2114-E-010-002 and NSC 101-2917-I-564-060.
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Lien, CY., Yang, TL., Hsiao, CH. et al. Realizing Digital Signatures for Medical Imaging and Reporting in a PACS Environment. J Med Syst 37, 9924 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-012-9924-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-012-9924-1