Each year, the country’s four main hospitals take 860,000 medical images Photo: Shutterstock

Each year, the country’s four main hospitals take 860,000 medical images Photo: Shutterstock

Luxembourg’s main hospitals since July can share medical imaging of patients between institutions thanks to a cloud-based service hosted at a top-tier data centre.

Luxith launched the final stage of its so-called Anim project last month. The economic interest group includes the country’s four main hospitals--the Centre hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL), the Centre hospitalier du Nord (CHdN), the Centre hospitalier Emile Mayrisch (Chem) and the Robert Schuman Hospitals (HRS).

The aim of the project, in collaboration with the eSanté Agency, is to pool the data generated by medical imaging as well as to archive it. More concretely, a doctor at the CHL will be able to consult an X-ray or an MRI performed at the Chem--with the patient’s consent and provided that their electronic shared medical file is in order.

“Historically, each hospital had its own local archive. The digitalisation of medical imaging began in Luxembourg hospitals in the 2000s. So we went from the picture to a file on a computer and a screen. Currently, 860,000 medical images are produced each year by the four hospitals,” explains Géraldine Vidou, head of medical imaging, interoperability and development at Luxith.

The average size of a medical image is 44 megabytes, but Vidou says that, depending on the image and the type of examination requested by the doctor, the size of the photo can very quickly rise to 600 megabytes or even more. The data, i.e. the medical images, are stored at two EBRC data centres in Luxembourg.

In the long term, CDs of medical imaging should disappear with the files only available digitally. Medical professionals through the shared patient file will also be able to easily and quickly access the patient’s medical history, which should save time. Finally, this easier access to medical imaging should help stop the practice of repeating the same examinations several times, which is often costly for both patient and hospital.

Medical imaging is sensitive data and is highly sought after during cyber attacks. In July, Cerba Laboratories and Ketterthill Laboratories that data from procedures performed between 1 January 2017 and 24 June 2021 had been stolen.

“Security measures have been defined to ensure security in all stages of the project, from transfer to storage, archiving and sharing. Finally, controls of these measures are in place to ensure the security of the data,” says Vidou.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.