Connect with us

Health

Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine Archive Standard

Published

on

What is a Decom Archive Standard?

A Dicom Archive Standard, or Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine Archive Standard, is a type of medical informational format that some organizations use for the archival storage of DICOM data. This article will explain what DICOM data is, why it needs to be stored, and why it is so important to have a DICOM archive that is standard and can be used by many different individuals, groups, and organizations.

What is DICOM Data?

DICOM data is essential information related to medical procedures. This information is represented as medical images. Different machines create these images of the human body, which are used in medical procedures, medical research, medical device creation, and a whole host of other medical uses of what are essentially different kinds of pictures taken of the human body.

Some common examples of data that would be encompassed by the DICOM standard would be things like X-Rays and MRIs – both images that doctors or technicians take of the human body in order to diagnose and treat current and future patients suffering from a whole host of ailments, from cancer to concussions.

Why does DICOM data need to be archived?

It is absolutely essential for both the continued success and future growth of the medical industry that DICOM data be kept, stored, and distributed inaccessible archives. Collecting and storing this data helps individual patients – for example, if a doctor can see an X-Ray taken of a patient’s bones made by another doctor in a different hospital he saves the time and money of having another one performed, saves valuable medical resources, and time, as well as protects the patient from potentially harmful radiation. Archiving DICOM data is critical for individual patients.

While individuals greatly benefit from archival DICOM data, the true benefit to society comes from the ability standard DICOM data gives medical researchers to see thousands or even millions of cases of a certain ailment or disease and examine the data at their beck and call.

They can see how certain medical problems react when certain solutions are applied and they can do this en mass, which saves them thousands of man-hours and allows current doctors to build on the successes and failures of the past. DICOM data helps us in the present, and it also helps to build our medical future.

Why is a DICOM Archive Standard so Important?

The archival standard for DICOM is incredibly important because it allows doctors, medical professionals, scientists, and researchers to communicate freely with each other using this data while working in different institutions, speaking different languages, and even being on different continents.

When this data is standardized and stored and everyone has the tools to access it, regardless of which hospital they work for or which country they live in, it does a great deal to enable scientific progress and communication. While DICOM archival standards may seem like a mundane, boring subject, they are actually crucial to many situations, like the fight against cancer or AIDS.