It says more than 200 healthcare institutions across the globe have now expressed interest in participating, with “substantial” datasets already added to the repository. 

When a child shows up at the emergency department with a traumatic brain injury, the encounter can often result in a costly head CT scan that provides little benefit to the patient, experts wrote Tuesday in JACR. 

ACR’s Center for Research and Innovation will gather and house all diagnostic scans for the Society of Critical Care Medicine's Viral Infection and Respiratory Illness Universal Study, or VIRUS, the groups announced Tuesday.

Participating institutions will contribute demographic information, signs and symptoms data, imaging exams, lab tests and patient outcomes.

That’s according to a new survey of various clinician types, published recently in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. 

Others have previously designed such reporting and data systems, but those do not specifically address radiology department workflows, Brigham and Women's experts wrote in JACR. 

About 80% of physicians requested an extra set of eyes from an outside facility either “always” or “most of the time,” and more than 90% said such consultations improved care.

If everyone would have logged in and downloaded their exams over the two-year study period, both users and the institutions could have saved a good chunk of change, according to new research.