DCMX
DICOM:Router
Your images. The whole country. One network.
The national network for secure medical image exchange, powered by DICOM:Router.
The case
A patient's history is scattered across hospitals and diagnostic centres throughout the country. Whoever wants to bring it together today phones, waits and meanwhile decides without the full picture — while care demands speed. Two moments from practice.
The night · emergency department
Arrival at the emergency department. The earlier CT study sits at an organisation eighty kilometres away.
A call to the on-duty radiology there. Waiting for a call back, a fax or a secure e-mail.
The images arrive — with luck — by a detour. The team has already had to decide.
The morning · radiology
The patient appears on the worklist for a follow-up examination.
Nobody knows that two other organisations have already imaged this patient.
The examination is done again: extra radiation, extra cost, a comparison that never gets made.
That is why DCMX
DCMX
With DCMX the earlier study sits next to the new scan within three minutes — directly from organisation to organisation, encrypted, and only after the legal basis has been checked. And in the regular workflow the network flags in advance that imaging exists elsewhere, so nobody has to ring around and nothing is done twice.
Fictional scenarios, for illustration.
The approach
DCMX is the national network that accredited healthcare organisations connect to. No central image store, but a network of routers that know each other, trust each other and query each other directly. Connecting takes two steps, each valuable on its own.
01
An image router in your own network, for your own image flows: rule-based routing between modalities, PACS and archive, de-identification and local search. Fully on its own, with no dependency on the network.
02
The same router enrols with DCMX; that makes the network functions available: federated search and retrieval at other organisations, the consent gate and the registers. In parallel with step 1, at your own pace.
Image data from across the country can be viewed straight away, at the moment it counts.
Your local image flows keep running, even without a connection to the national network.
Image data travels directly and end-to-end encrypted between organisations, never through a central server.
Outside the organisation nothing happens without consent — and the model that applies determines what is allowed.
The national network
DCMX coordinates and guards consent; the image data travels directly from organisation to organisation. Scroll along with one federated request — from question to register.
01The question
Does imaging of this patient exist elsewhere? The request leaves with the hospital's own patient number; the router translates it through the EHR into the national citizen number (BSN). Name and date of birth do not travel.
02Coordination
The DCMX Root Servers — run redundantly, so the network never hangs on one machine — know the connected organisations and confirm who is who. They see no images and no patient data — only who is a member and who may talk to whom.
03Consent
The question reaches the other organisations' routers directly, over encrypted tunnels. Each router checks its own EHR for standing consent. Hospital C and Diagnostic Centre B: yes. Clinic D has nothing for this patient.
04Image data
The images flow peer-to-peer from C and B to A — never through DCMX. On arrival they receive Hospital A's patient number and a provenance mark, so where they came from stays visible.
05Recorded
Hospital A records what it received; C and B what they disclosed — under the same reference, so two registers describe one event. Three minutes after the question, the images sit next to the new scan.
Fictional scenario for illustration; organisations and references are invented.
Connect
The network is being built. This is what connecting looks like — and if you are a hospital, diagnostic centre or vendor, we would like to hear from you.
Together we look at your situation and at the conditions for joining as an accredited healthcare organisation.
In your own network, connected to PACS and EHR. Usable for internal routing straight away.
The router announces itself; once approved it receives its certificate and sets up the encrypted tunnels.
Federated search and retrieval, the consent gate and the registers are active.
DCMX is an initiative of SKY Medical Group, Enschede, the Netherlands.