TM-Community: a regional sharing tool.

The principle

In the Namur area of Belgium, five separate hospitals have set up collaboration processes thanks to the transfer of medical images. This information sharing and these remote partnerships are possible because the hospital departments are equipped with the  TM-Community feature of Telemis-Medical: a solution that provides many benefits to the sites that are connected to it.  

The sharing of medical infrastructure amongst many medical sites is one of the most striking advantages: for example,  MRI images taken at the Mont-Godinne Dinant hospital can be sent to the St-Luc clinic in Bouge, and  PET scan images can be sent from the same site to the Sainte-Elisabeth clinic in Namur, St-Luc in Bouge, or indeed the “Wallonie picarde Hospital” in Tournai. This sharing also supports the medical skills of specialists, who can easily call on the experience and opinion of colleagues by sharing images. TM-Community also promotes improved communication in clinical studies.  

What does this mean in practice?

In practice, the site where the investigation is carried out decides to send the patient file, one or more exams, or just a set of images, to the PACS of another site.  So it's not a case of the remote site going fishing in the local PACS. This procedure complies with privacy rules.

And beyond the technology?

Following a request for collaboration between two sites, an agreement is drafted, covering the exchange of images and patient data between the hospitals. This agreement must be approved by the medical council and the ethics committees of both sites. According to Hubert Meurisse, leader of the PACS project at the Mont Godinne Dinant Hospital, "The partnership with Telemis has allowed us to make the most of 'telemedicine' technologies and has made a major contribution to reaching our filmless and paperless targets, whilst truly adding value to patient diagnosis and medical monitoring."