MiBank: A web-based integrated medical information system for traumatic brain injury

Approximately ten million people in the world suffer from traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year. A total of $60 billion cost due to TBI was estimated in the United States in year 2000. To reduce the burden more clinical research and education are required. In this study we developed MiBank, a web-based integrated TBI information system, to enable rapid access to both digital images and associated text reports for audit, education and research. MiBank contains more than 30,000 brain computed tomography (CT) images from over 500 patients and is equipped with functional options to search, compare, summarize and annotate CT images, radiology reports and clinician remarks online. The image annotation function is designed to enable clinicians and researchers to capture and display domain expert knowledge, and a discussion forum function encourages active communication and sharing. Emphasizing confidentiality of anonymised data and access control, MiBank provides a virtual collaboration platform integrating various clinical data sets for research and continuing education. As an online information system, it eliminates the restrictions of the traditional isolated DICOM workstations. MiBank can potentially support remote consulting and statistical analysis of aggregated multimodality data. Although MiBank is designed and implemented for TBI, it may be extended and customized to study other clinical disorders. In this report, we share our learning experience through user survey and also propose a future plan to improve the system. MiBank may be accessible by researchers and clinicians on request.