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This paper describes why and how DICOM, the standard that has been the basis for medical imaging interoperability around the world for several decades, has been extended into a full web technology-based standard, DICOMweb. At the turn of the century, healthcare embraced information technology, which created new problems and new opportunities for the medical imaging industry; at the same time, web technologies matured and began serving other domains well. This paper describes DICOMweb, how it extended the DICOM standard, and how DICOMweb can be applied to problems facing healthcare applications to address workflow and the changing healthcare climate.

Structured reporting, created when a standardized template with organized subheadings is combined with relevant observations of a diagnostic study into a meaningful result, has the potential to raise both the quality and the predictability of the radiologist report, revolutionizing the workflow and its outcomes. These templates contain great value, as they carve a path based on best practice for the radiologist to follow, and thus should be shared, reviewed, and improved. Unfortunately, these templates are often not shareable today due to a lack of standards for describing and transporting templates. This paper outlines and discusses an appropriate and effective electronic method for transporting radiology report templates using of the style of representational state transfer (REST). Enabling a structured radiology report template library with REST enables just-in-time accessibility of templates, achieving efficiencies and effectiveness.