Medical exam pre-pushing system and method

A medical imaging archive system comprising:

• a long-term storage device containing archived medical imaging studies in DICOM format;
• a hardware or virtual processor operatively running in a long-term archive environment;
• software modules that, when executed by the hardware or virtual processor, cause implementation of a pre-push controller comprising:
• an examination monitor module configured to interface with a hospital information system or electronic medical record database and automatically identify patients with upcoming medical examinations;
• a prior study locator module configured to search the long-term archive environment using patient identifiers and metadata to locate relevant prior medical imaging studies;
• a distribution coordinator module configured to determine target PACS based on examination scheduling data by:
• parsing the examination scheduling data to identify an examination location;
• querying a PACS registry database to identify PACS associated with an ordering physician,
• the examination location, and an interpreting physician;
• checking availability status of the target PACS;
• and
• selecting available PACS with sufficient storage capacity for the relevant prior medical imaging studies, without requiring input from the PACS, and select transmission methods based on data volume thresholds and network bandwidth availability;
• and
• a transmission engine module configured to execute either:
• (i) multi-threaded DICOM Send operations that eliminate query processing steps, or (ii) multi-threaded direct SMB/CIFS file transfer operations that bypass DICOM protocol overhead;
• a network interface configured to proactively transmit multiple prior medical imaging studies simultaneously to multiple destination PACS before receiving distribution requests;
• wherein the pre-push controller coordinates data distribution operations to eliminate duplicate network requests from multiple PACS and reduces archive system processing load through centralized distribution management.

An archive-initiated method for increasing data transmission speed and optimizing network performance in medical imaging systems by utilizing parallel processing and reducing redundant data transmission operations, the archive-initiated method comprising:

• receiving, at a long-term archive system, scheduling information from a hospital information system or EMR indicating upcoming patient examinations;
• automatically analyzing, by the long-term archive system, the scheduling information to identify patients requiring access to prior medical imaging studies for clinical comparison purposes;
• for each identified patient, executing, by the long-term archive system, a single coordinated database search operation across the long-term archive system to locate relevant prior studies, thereby avoiding multiple redundant search operations;
• implementing a coordinated distribution process comprising:
• determining target PACS by:
• parsing the scheduling information, by the long-term archive system, to identify an examination location;
• querying, by the long-term archive system, a PACS registry database to identify PACS associated with an ordering physician, the examination location, and an interpreting physician;
• checking availability status of the target PACS;
• selecting available PACS with sufficient storage capacity for the prior medical imaging studies, without requiring input from the PACS;
• and
• determining data volume and transmission time requirements for the prior medical imaging studies;
• when data volume equals or exceeds a predetermined threshold, selecting multi-threaded direct file transfer using SMB/CIFS protocol to bypass DICOM processing overhead;
• when data volume is below the predetermined threshold, selecting multi-threaded DICOM Send operations that eliminate resource-intensive DICOM Query components;
• executing the coordinated distribution process using parallel processing to transmit multiple prior medical imaging studies simultaneously to all requiring PACS through a centralized distribution operation;
• and
• recording successful transmissions in a distribution tracking database;
• wherein the coordinated distribution process improves data transmission speed by utilizing parallel processing and network performance by eliminating redundant DICOM Query/Retrieve operations that would otherwise be generated by individual PACS requesting identical data.