Healthcare IT Systems Expanded with DICOM Course

A new course has been initiated that teaches Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) connectivity fundamentals and key troubleshooting skills to support any vendors' digital imaging systems.

GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK), in response to customer demand for DICOM education, has introduced a three-day "Essentials of DICOM” course for biomedical engineers, imaging technicians, and hospital information technology (IT) personnel.

One of the founding members of DICOM Standards Committee, GE Healthcare is offering the vendor-independent DICOM course to all technical support personnel to help them install and configure new systems and improve workflow, as well as, troubleshoot issues related to medical image transmission throughout the healthcare enterprise. The DICOM standard was created by the U.S. National Electrical Manufacturers Association to aid the distribution and viewing of medical images throughout hospitals and clinics. A single DICOM file contains both a header (which stores information about the patient's name, type of scan, etc.) and all of the image data.

"The days when DICOM issues affect the radiology department alone are over,” said Michael Reed, GE Healthcare Education Services General Manager. "If biomedical engineers, IT and radiology department professionals can troubleshoot issues related to DICOM image communication and imaging system connectivity, this will help the entire healthcare organization reduce downtime and streamline workflow at the point of care.”

"Customers specifically told us they needed training on how to troubleshoot such DICOM issues as failed associations, lost images, and loss of connectivity with devices on the network,” added Leanne Cordisco, Healthcare IT program manager. "The Essentials of DICOM course helps them address such issues at these points of care.”

"The Essentials of DICOM class adds to our portfolio of healthcare IT education,” Mr. Reed said. "We now offer a specialized class for just about any area of interest within the world of healthcare connectivity. Whether it is networking basics, security, wireless, or DICOM, GE Healthcare provides hands-on training that is designed specifically for the healthcare environment. We believe there are few vendors in the healthcare or IT industries that offer such comprehensive educational courses.”

The course objectives are: (1) identify the types of devices and their uses on a digital imaging network; (2) understand digital imaging workflow and dataflow; (3) identify where DICOM is used on a network; (4) learn how to troubleshoot connectivity across the layers of the OSI (open systems interconnect) model within an imaging network, and isolate network connectivity issues from DICOM configuration issues; (5) learn how to use the DICOM standard as a reference; (6) analyze common associations, including verify, store, store commit, print, query retrieve, and modality performed procedure step; compare DICOM conformance statement to predict connectivity between devices; (7) learn the configuration requirements for DICOM connectivity; (8) master the use of DICOM simulators, including DICOM Validation Toolkit (DVTK); (9) lastly, demonstrate proficiency in the recording, playback, and analysis of the network sniffer, DICOM Validation Toolkit.

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