DICOM WG10: Strategic Advisory Committee Report to DSC meeting May 7, 2002, Seoul

January 12, Meetings since last report Joint meeting with ISO/TC215 WG2 January Process for DICOM becoming an ISO standard DICOM Strategic Direction for Image Distribution –prepared a white paper: “DICOM Strategic Direction for Image Distribution” January 4, 2002 –prepared a presentation on this topic

January 12, The DICOM Strategic Advisory Committee believes that the combination of web-based protocols, consumer image file-formats, plug-ins and applets form an excellent low-cost platform for tightly- coupled client-server medical record applications in which the server has access to image data and information in its original DICOM format.

January 12, All the patient's context information is available in the EPR, and therefor there's no need to develop standards for Meta data in consumer image file formats: the information is available and can easily be conveyed be means of XML documents which provide the context for the images.

January 12, End-users have also sophisticated requirements in addition to having a simple view of the image, and therefore universal access to the original acquired image data is required.

January 12, Because of the privacy rules which have to be enforced the access to the patient's image data will be routed via the electronic patient record. Therefore, a unique reference is needed from the electronic patient record to the original image data to facilitate this access. XML will play a significant role in the EPR, and this leads to the requirement to have this unique reference to original image data available in XML documents.

January 12, It's DICOM WG10 desire to work with ISO/TC 215/WG2 to materialize the outlined strategy. Conclusion of the meeting: Continue with efforts to become an ISO standard DICOM will continue with URL topic, and prepare a joint DICOM-ISO TC215 workitem We will have yearly joint meetings with ISO TC 215 WG2

January 12, WG10 meeting May 6, 2002, Seoul. DICOM Strategic Document –Input process seems to work, update process works, need to prepare a version October to be submitted for approval to DSC Relation to other SDOs and related groups –ISO/TC215, ANSI X12N, ASTM E07.11, HL7, IHE JPEG group needs to be added –Status of translations of DICOM codes

January 12, WG10 meeting May 6, 2002, Seoul. Process for the development of codes –Need for definitions, also the SNOMED codes –advice: fold ad-hoc group on codes into WG8 –ask WG8 to write a procedure for the development of codes in DICOM –ask WG8 to write a clarification of the standard on how to use codes

January 12, WG10 meeting May 6, 2002, Seoul. Web based reference to DICOM’s permanent objects ( URL) –“Simple” URL –Method for Query, partial document abstraction => not in workitem –Want to retrieve the original object, and also have the option to specify a transfer syntax. – And, want to retrieve even a presentation of the object, e.g. JPEG, CDA level –We will prepare two workitems, one for broad permanent document reference, one for DICOM objects

January 12, WG10 meeting May 6, 2002, Seoul. Web based reference to DICOM’s permanent objects ( URL) –workitems will be prepared in the June meeting, and submitted for approval by the DSC –submitted to ISO to be approved in the August meeting of ISO TC 215 –will be a test case for a formal working together between DICOM and ISO on the creation of a supplement to the DICOM standard, and approved as ISO standard.

January 12, WG10 meeting May 6, 2002, Seoul. CDA level 3 –there a concerns that the CDA level 3 will not materialize as quickly as we would like –within DICOM we don’t see alternatives to continue with our efforts in WG20 to harmonize DICOM SR with CDA level 3 –a new outlet for the DICOM SR will be via the URL, converted to and presented as CDA level 1 or 2.

January 12, WG10 meeting May 6, 2002, Seoul. Conformance Statement in XML, DICOM standard in XML –WG6 has been asked to provide a status update on the workitem to express conformance statements in XML –there is a renewed interest to write the DICOM standard in XML. The issues and impact will be analyzed, and in the June meeting we will formulate an advice.

January 12, Strategic process We need to have a closer look at our main topics: Image distribution in the enterprise Workflow management Structured reporting objects and templates New imaging technology Will be on the agenda for the June meeting