PORTER: a Prototype System for Patient-Oriented Radiology Reporting

To empower patients to participate in their medical care and decision-making, effective communication is critical. In radiology, the clinical report is the primary medium of communication. Although radiologists historically have authored reports with the referring provider as the intended reader, patients increasingly access the reports through portals to electronic health record systems. We developed a system named PORTER (Patient-Oriented Radiology Reporter) to augment radiology reports with lay-language definitions. Our IRB-approved, HIPAA-compliant study protocol analyzed 100 knee MRI reports from an academic medical center to identify the most commonly utilized terms. A glossary of 313 terms was constructed to include definitions of the terms and, where available, links to reference sources and public-domain images. Flesch-Kincaid readability scores were computed to assure that definitions were readable at or below 10th-grade reading level. The system provided an interactive web site to view outpatient knee MRI exams. After logging in with their exam ID number and date of birth, patients viewed their report annotated with definitions from the glossary. Applicable images were displayed when the user’s mouse hovered over a glossary term. This patient-oriented system can help empower patients to better understand their radiology results.