Medical record retrieval is a service that fetches a patient's records and medical images from other hospitals and clinics, for a referral to a specialist or for a clinical trial. It uses whichever channel each source accepts: an electronic connection where one exists, a secure website, a disc of scan images, or a fax. It is used mainly in the United States.
When a patient is referred to a specialist, the specialist needs the history before the first visit: past reports, test results and scans. In theory, these records move electronically. In practice, they sit in dozens of different systems. Some hospitals offer FHIR APIs, and many small clinics do not. Some still send records only by secure cloud fax, or post a disc of scan images. So the specialist's staff spend hours phoning other hospitals. Meanwhile, the patient's first visit is delayed, or the specialist sees the patient without the full history.
A retrieval service does this chasing for the specialist. It sends a request to each source, with the patient's signed consent. It follows up until the records arrive. Then it sorts the pages, removes duplicates and indexes them, so that the doctor can find the latest scan report in seconds. Scan images, such as CT and MRI scans, are fetched in their standard image format. They are loaded into the hospital's PACS and imaging AI platform, the system in which radiologists view scans.
Here is a typical case. A cancer centre in Massachusetts accepts a new patient with a brain tumour, referred from a hospital in another state. Her first visit is in five days. The retrieval service requests records from four places: the referring hospital, two imaging centres and her family doctor. The hospital sends its records through a FHIR API within an hour. One imaging centre uploads two MRI scans, and the other sends one CT scan the next day. The family doctor's clinic faxes 31 pages. By the third day, everything is indexed in the cancer centre's record, and the oncologist has studied the scans before the patient arrives.
Clinical trials need the same service. A trial must check each patient's past records to confirm that the patient qualifies, and it must collect more records while the trial runs. Retrieval services supply these records to clinical trial patient recruitment and to the clinical trial data platform that holds all of a trial's data.
Medical record retrieval is a practical way round the lack of interoperability. As more hospitals offer standard APIs, more of the work becomes automatic. But people are still needed for the sources that send only paper or fax.