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Comment by beardedwizard | Hacker News Reader

And the doctor across the globe can never access it to save the patients life.

How about, hear me out for a sec, you email/file-share the data off the disc to the doctor abroad in those cases when you need to. Mind-blowing, right?

If it's indeed a life saving situation as you say, a doctor will have to do scans there and not wait to receive possibly outdated imaging data from another country

Also, no hospital in my country is just gonna release my private medical records on the spot because a doctor from another country called and told them to. There's some formal paperwork that needs to be signed by the pacient and if you're in a coma then you can't sign it and if it's an emergency you don't have time for that whole process so they'll have to perform the scans there.

The case of having to quickly send/receive pacient data to or from doctors abroad is not something most public hospitals in my country are prepped for not will they since it's super niche case and in case of emergency they'll do the scans on the spot.

How often is that a problem?

I'd say never because no sane medical professional will be operating or doing any procedure on "some CD from somewhere", pretty much the same with mailing that out.

They want scans/tests from trusted source to make decisions about person health/life. The only thing they can trust is whatever they have close and used for years.

If there is no time to get a new scan/test I think there is no time to download stuff or wait for someone to email things.

This is nonsense, doctors routinely order scans from other doctors or hospitals who have equipment and then view the results.

From the ones they know not somewhere across the globe like mentioned above.

Idk; we don't live in the cdrom world any more, it was replaced by high speed internet. The rest of this comment thread seems to answer as if we are asking this question today; and not in 1994 when 56k modems were still a thing and cds were routinely mailed.

I brought my CT scans on disc to my ortho who didn't have a CT machine in the last 300 days.

It could be a problem any time someone travels.

I have a hard time believing that it’s possible to set up a legal and technical framework where patient data can be safely accessed internationally faster than doing another X-ray or whatever might be currently distributed by CD.

Are you serious? You can call pretty much any hospital in the US and request DICOM files sent to your email. Mailing a CD across the world is insane, as is wasting money and radiation budget on yet another CT scan

No serious operation or procedure will be done by any doctor having some mailed x-ray photos.

They will do new one right there and if there is no time - there is no time to mail stuff around.

What kind of nerd fantasy is it?

I went once with x-ray on cd that was weeks old for procedure - doctor there went “yeah cool, I don’t care, it is my risk we do new one by personel I know on equipment I know”.

Is this a regional difference? In the US, my experience has been like the other poster, it's normal for them to wait days or weeks for xrays from radiology specialty places. Maybe it's a rural thing where many providers don't have their own radiologist and end up outsourcing it.

I think the distinction is, the Dr orders the x-rays from a place they have a relationship with and waiting for it, vs, you bringing x-rays from some unknown source.

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