I have a relative who absolutely adores my daughter (as anyone with eyes and soul would) and regularly uses his Smartphone to take pictures of her. One evening, while showing off the pictures during a family gathering, another relative offered to download them to her computer so everyone could see the pictures on a bigger screen. She connected the two devices, clicked the prompts to import pictures, and went back to party.
An hour passed before they realized something was wrong.
The phone had crashed during the transfer. It would need to be reformatted before anything could be done with it, and this would delete any data still on the phone. The pictures were nowhere to be found on the computer, and they had not been backed up to any other computer, disk, website, or cloud. It's a data integration horror story. But don't worry – there's a happy ending.
This cautionary tale made me think of the importance of data security, especially as it relates to medical image transfer for clinical trials.
Importance of Data Security in Medical Image Transfer for Clinical Trials
When it comes to data security, most people fall into one of two categories: those who constantly fear the loss of data, and those who don't realize it can be lost. For those of you in the second category, make no mistake – your data can be lost!
As more and more sponsors and CROs embrace the available electronic resources for medical image transfer, image management, and blinded reads, it is vital to ensure that the images and resulting data are treated with the same level of care you would want for your own personal pictures.
Advanced Medical Image Transfer System
When an image for a clinical trial is submitted through an advanced medical image transfer system like BioClinica's WebSend, the original "source" image stays at the site. Once the image arrives at BioClinica it is archived on a secure server with multiple levels of back-up and disaster protection.
Using an electronic medical image transfer system like this can actually make the image transfer process more secure than physical delivery methods such as sending CDs or film through a courier service. These methods bring a lot of risk, both from a security standpoint and potential loss, as well as added costs.
There's a tremendous amount at stake in a clinical trial, and there's a lot that can go wrong. By choosing the right Imaging Core Lab that offers proven and implemented technology solutions, you can eliminate any potential risk related to data security and keep attention focused on your trial.
As for the promised happy ending, after several hours on the phone with a support technician, the pictures were discovered on the computer. We are now facing a new problem – data proliferation. The images have been saved on his new phone, they've been saved on his computer, they've been saved on his son's computer, they've been saved on my computer, they've been uploaded to a cloud service, they've been saved to… well, you get the picture.
