In medicine, photographs are an integral part of patients' medical records. They are ubiquitous in the hospital and have become indispensable. Healthcare professionals use them for a variety of reasons. For example, to follow theevolution of a skin lesion (chronic wound, surgical wound, skin disease, allergic reaction...); to keep a comparative history before and after a surgical operation; to aid diagnosis by zooming in on a lesion or asking a colleague'sopinion; to illustrate clinical cases for research and teaching; to constitute medico-legal evidence...
Some practitioners take over 200 photos a week. Such is the case of Pr Frédéric Bodin, plastic and aesthetic surgeon at Strasbourg University Hospitals. He is behind the Pixacare application. He has come up with the ideal management solution for efficiently and securely taking, sorting, storing and sharing medical photographs.
Today, the solution is deployed in over 20 hospitals in France, including CHU Brest, Lille and Strasbourg. The managers and CIOs of these healthcare establishments chose to integrate Pixacare for three reasons:
- Automate photo filing to save medical time.
- Secure photographic data throughout the healthcare facility.
- Collaborate between teams on photos.
Theapplication automates the management of medical photos.
Pixacare's medical photo library automates photo classification. Photos are instantly sorted by date, by patient and indexed with keywords. This benefits both the user and the hospital or clinic.
The intelligent medical photo library automatically indexes photos according to a common nomenclature.
All photos taken from the application or imported are attached to a patient file. By clicking on the photo, you'll find the following information: patient's first and last name, date of birth, PIN, associated keywords and a version of the photo with annotation if available. In this way, doctors and nurses can retrieve patient history in an instant.
It is possible toexport a follow-up report containing all the photos taken for a given patient. For each photo, the date, the name of the caregiver and the associated keywords are indicated. This PDF file can be given to the patient and feeds into the DPI.
Automated classification of medical photos ensures correct patient identification.
In France, there are still too many cases of incorrect patient identification. Erroneous diagnosis or therapy, exchange of inaccurate information, delays in treatment... The consequences can be serious and impact on patient health. The ANS recommends that identification processes be put in place to reinforce the reliability of identities collected at the point of care.
Before taking a photograph, the application requires the user to identify the patient. The aim is to avoid data entry errors and duplicate entries, thereby reinforcing identity vigilance. Several options are available, such as scanning the hospital label or identification via GAM.
In fact, when Pixacare is interoperably connected to GAM, there's no need to re-enter all the patient's details. The doctor enters the PIN or date of birth and selects the patient from the list of admitted patients. The patient's data have already been entered at the administrative reception desk.
Automatic classification of medical photos saves up to 1h30 of medical time per week.
A study published in the Annals of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery has shown that surgeons save time by using a smartphone app dedicated to medical photography. The aim of the study was to calculate the time saved by the Pixacare app at the time ofdata acquisition.
For the past twenty years, the method classically used in the plastic and maxillofacial surgery departments at Strasbourg University Hospital has been as follows:
- Shooting during consultation with a smartphone or camera.
- Manual retrieval of patient identities and keywords, transfer to a computer and creation of a file by the surgeon.
- Manual retrieval of the file by the department secretariat and storage in the department's common database.
With this method, the time taken to acquire photographic data was 259 seconds, or around 4 minutes and 30 seconds per patient.
Using the Pixacare application , this time has been almost quadrupled to just 69 seconds. In fact, the automation of acquisition steps speeds up data collection:
- Scan of patient identity with hospital label.
- Shoot directly with the application.
- Add keywords.
- Automated transfer to HDS-approved server.
The Pixacare application saves surgeons 3 minutes and 10 seconds per patient, i.e. up to 1h30 for a day of thirty consultations. This saves valuable medical time, which doctors can devote to patient treatment and surgical interventions.
The solution secures the healthcare establishment's photographic data.
In 2016, 85.9% of doctors used their smartphones to capture medical images. By 2019, 93% were doing so. We can imagine that by 2022 this figure has risen even further. Consequently, securing photographic data acquired by practitioners with a smartphone becomes a crucial issue.
It is essential to secure medical photos taken with practitioners' personal smartphones.
Data storage systems vary from practitioner to practitioner: smartphone, personal computer, business computer, cloud, hard disk, USB stick, memory card. For the most part, these are unapproved, unprotected media that can easily be mislaid.
Since the smartphone has become the most widely used tool for taking medical photos, we've seen a scattering of images outside medical records.
Often, even if only for a few days or a few hours, photos end up being stored in private phone galleries. These images are mixed in with family or vacation photos. In fact, 26% of doctors reveal that they have accidentally shown these images to their loved ones, thereby breaching medical confidentiality.
The advantage of using Pixacare is that medical photographs are dissociated from the personal gallery, and access to them requires secure authentication.
Healthcare professionals and institutions are required to host sensitive patient data on HDS-certified servers.
Medical photos are sensitive data. Access to them is governed by law. According to article 1111-8 of the French Public Health Code: "Health professionals or health establishments may deposit personal health data, collected or produced in the course of preventive, diagnostic or care activities, with natural or legal persons approved for this purpose."
Decree 2018-137 of February 26, 2018 defines the rules for hosting personal health data. Hébergeurs de Données de Santé (HDS) certification is required for Cloud services that host personal health data. HDS certification requires service providers to adopt measures that ensure the security, confidentiality and accessibility of personal health data for patients.
Photos taken with the application are hosted directly on an HDS server and are not stored on the phone.
The medical photo library helps teams to work together more effectively thanks to photos.
The Pixacare application offers care teams two functionalities to strengthen their collaboration around photos: groups and secure messaging.
Groups to share photos of care services.
Hospital departments using Pixacare have become accustomed to using the group functionality to share their photos. Patient photo folders can be updated by all members of the department. Group access is managed by the department head.
The vascular surgery department at Haguenau hospital gave us some feedback on their use of this feature. They meet weekly to review therapeutic cases, and are used to putting photos at the center of the conversation. Since they've been using Pixacare, meetings are easier to organize and more effective.
The same applies to the plastic and maxillofacial surgery department at Strasbourg University Hospitals. They also use this feature to run their weekly meeting. Previously, it took the department's secretary a day to prepare this meeting. She had to manually collect all the photos taken during the week by 10 surgeons and 10 interns. Now, she no longer needs to prepare anything, as all the photos are instantly available in the group.
Amessaging system for securely exchanging photos and medical advice.
95.3% of practitioners consider it essential to be able to send and receive photos on their smartphones. Yet commonly used messaging systems such as SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram are not secure enough to exchange sensitive data. For want of a better alternative, they are often used by care teams.
The Conseil National de l'Ordre des Médecins, in its February 2017 report, recommends that "access to information that may be shared in files must be computerized identified, time-stamped and traced with traces kept in the IT system." The CNOM also recommends using a system with a means of authenticating the healthcare professional with access to messages.
Pixacare's internal messaging system allows exchanges to be dated, tracked and stored, while requiring users to authenticate themselves with a password or facial recognition before opening the application.
Things to remember :
The Pixacare application is the ideal tool to enable doctors and paramedics to use their personal phones safely in the course of care. This photo management solution is simple and ergonomic. It guarantees automatic labeling, implementation of photos in the medical file, perfect data security and easy exchange between healthcare professionals.
