The most impressive tool for clinical decision-making presented at the Health 2.0 conference was a program that allowed docs to share medical images over the Internet, developed by MyPACS.net.  Any DICOM image (e.g. CT scan, MRI, etc) can be uploaded and shared through their website. Say, for example, that a patient comes to the hospital with abdominal pains.  After undergoing a CT scan, the radiologist determines that there is a mass located in the abdominal cavity, but is not quite sure what it is.  Traditionally, the radiologist would either compare the patient’s CT to scans in the hospital archive, or spend hours searching through the limited information in medical journals.  With MyPACS.net, doctors can upload and share hundreds or thousands of images, instantaneously.  It’s like Facebook photos or Flickr for physicians.

Not only would this system help a small-town hospital that has limited DICOM image archives, but it also eliminates the 6-10 month lag in publication of images in medical journals.