System and method for interfacing a radiology information system to a central dictation system

• US 7,017,161 B1
• Filed: 10/11/1999
• Issued: 03/21/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 10/11/1999
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Dictaphone Corporation (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Greene, Channell, Cyr, James, Kuhnen, Regina J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Thomson, W.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Hoang, Phuong N.
• Application Number:
  US09/415,617
• Time in Patent Office: 2,353 Days
• Field of Search: 719/328, 707/1, 707/3, 707/10, 707/104.1, 705/2, 705/3
• US Class Current: 719/328
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0727 in a storage system, e.g. in a DASD or network based storage system drivers for digital recording or reproducing units G06F3/06; circuits for error detection or correction within digital recording or reproducing units G11B20/18; for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS], H04L67/1097
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0778 Dumping, i.e. gathering error/state information after a fault for later diagnosis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/544 Buffers; Shared memory; Pipes
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 for local operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 70/60 relating to pathologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 11/10 with dictation recording and playback systems
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A software system provides an interface between a radiology information system and a central dictation system. The software includes first and second application modules which are both in communication with a database management system. Other components of the software system include protocol DLL'"'"'s (dynamic linked libraries) and a communication DLL. Each of the software components maintains a separate trace buffer. An event occurring in any one of the components triggers a dump of all of the trace buffers. A server socket object is maintained in existence and placed in an accept mode when a client socket terminates communication with the server socket object.

Claims

1. A method of interfacing a central dictation system to a radiology information system with a software system, the method comprising the steps of:

providing a first application module configured to interface with the radiology information system and a database management system;

providing a second application module configured to interface with the central dictation system, the first application module, and the database management system, the central dictation system having a dictation server;

receiving data from the radiology information system through the first application module at the second application module;

receiving patient information from the radiology information system at the first application module;

transmitting a query based on the patient information to the database management system from a first manager application module of the first application module;

determining a status of a record for the patient information in the database management system;

determining a type of event based on the patient information in response to determination of the status being existent for the record;

determining a status of an accession number associated with the patient formation;

updating the database management system with the patient information in response to a determination of the status being existent for the accession number; and

writing the type of event to a trace log.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

determining a status of an accession number in the database management system;

determining whether a query has been issued for the accession number in the database management system; and

querying for the accession number in the database management system in response to determination of non-existence status for the accession number and no query being issued for the accession number.

3. The method according to claim 2, further comprising the steps of writing the accession number in the database management system from a dictation and writing the type of event to a trace log.

4. The method according to claim 3, further comprising the step of transmitting a reconciliation message to a manager application module of said first application module.