A novel approach to endoscopic exams archiving

Abstract

The technological evolution verified in recent years caused an increase in the number of therapeutic and diagnostic tests prescribed/performed that led to an exponential growth in the amount of data generated. In the particular case of endoscopy, the data resulting from the procedure is not stored, disallowing their use for future consultation or research purposes and thus forcing the repetition, sometimes unnecessary, of the exam. In order to overcome these issues, an archiving system was developed based on a NoSQL database. The proposed system is supported by a distributed architecture comprising different health care institutions and allows the archiving and replication of the produced examinations. Therefore, the system allows transparent and ubiquitous access to these exams that often correspond to large media files. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.