Abstract A patient has an imaging study performed at one
facility and has the study exported to portable media. Later,
the patient takes the media to a different institution. The
study on that media may need to be imported into that new
institution’s imaging system. This would be done to avoid a
repeat examination, or so that the study can be on file for
reference purposes. Importing prior studies is best performed
by creating a new order on the institution’s imaging
system and then associating the DICOM objects from the
prior study with it. In this way the prior study is actually
inserted into the imaging system’s electronic health record
(EHR) and is properly indexed so that it can be identified
and later retrieved as needed. In the past at the Department
of Veterans Affairs (VA), importing prior DICOM studies
into the VA systems had been a very slow labor-intensive
process that took anywhere from 10 to 30 min to import a
single study. We have developed a new DICOM Importer
application that reduces the manual effort to import a prior
study to less than a minute. We have redesigned and
automated the process to make it much more efficient for
the user. The Importer also handles contract examinations
that are ordered by the VA and performed at outside
imaging facilities, with similar time savings. This work is
important because is addresses one of the major unsolved
problems with import reconciliation workflow: how to
efficiently handle the importing of prior studies.