James H. Thrall, MD Teleradiology offers the promise to improve quality of care and quality of service to patients and referring providers while simultaneously improving the efficiency of the health care system and the productivity and quality of work life of radiologists. Hospital-to-home teleradiology is widely used in the United States for off-hours health care coverage (1), and teleradiology has become the basis for the formation of a number of commercial enterprises that provide outsourcing services for image interpretation. The full potential of teleradiology to change paradigms of care is not yet known and likely will require substantial additional experience and experimentation to understand. In the meantime, there are still serious technical and operational limitations that need to be overcome before the advantages of teleradiology can be realized. There is also a daunting series of risks that need to be better understood before the myriad of opportunities associated with teleradiology can be fully explored and beneficially integrated into the health care system and the practice of radiology.
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