Medical Image Storage Can Increase Prostate Scan Benefit

The benefits of being able to store medical images in the cloud lie in the extensive capacity to keep records and the ease of remote access to them, which may prove essential in diagnostics to enable medics to access the scans they need, whenever required.

Such accessibility becomes more relevant as scanning technology improves and the potential to defeat deadly diseases increases as a result. Such an advance has just been proclaimed in the area of prostate cancer.

An international study including the University of Birmingham, University of London College Hospitals and University College London found that a quicker and cheaper MRI scan is as effective at detecting prostate cancer as the 30-40 minute scans currently used as standard.

The study, published in the journal JAMA, revealed that a two-part MRI scan taking half as long as the current scans is just as effective in diagnosis.

Researchers said this shorter duration would likely have the effect of increasing access to MRI scans. A positive benefit of this would be more scans, increased detection and therefore a larger number of patients surviving thanks to early clinical intervention.

At present, 56,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year, with 12,000 deaths. In 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, 38 per cent of eligible men in the UK did not get scanned. Easier access may reduce this shortfall.

Enhanced storage of scans and access to them could further aid the situation, as it would mean there is more capacity to store the data and doctors can access it remotely, ensuring there is no hold-up in identifying cancers and getting the process of treatment started at the earliest possible opportunity.

While age is the biggest factor in susceptibility to prostate cancer, with those over 50 at greatest risk, other significant risk factors include a family history of the disease and ethnicity, with black men being the highest risk group.