Dr. David Gruen was traveling when his mother-in-law called him, asking for a favor. Her husband had just had an MRI and requested that Gruen, a radiologist, take a look at the results.
Yet the seemingly simple request ran into roadblocks. Gruen’s father-in-law had undergone two MRI scans recently: one at a hospital and another at an outpatient imaging center. Because these medical systems weren’t connected, his 87-year-old mother-in-law drove to each medical provider to pick up two separate CDs with the images. She also had to get reports printed and delivered to Gruen’s house. Back at home, Gruen scrambled to find a CD drive to give him access to the data, which also provided no comparative details.
