An iPod a day keeps the doctor up-to-date

Add another to the long list of creative uses for the iPod:
radiologists at UCLA and their colleagues around the world are using the iPod to store medical images. Osman Ratlib, M.D., Ph.D., professor and vice-chairman of radiologic services at the University of California, Los Angeles came up with the idea of using the iPod as a sort of
'giant memory stick.'

Dr. Ratlib and Antoine Rosset, M.D., a Swiss radiologist, developed the free and open source software package OsiriX to display and manipulate complex medical imagining data on the Macintosh. The software integrates with the iPod as well as with iChat, allowing easy and low-cost 'teleradiology' for doctors who can send images to other radiologists across the globe for immediate feedback and discussion.

What a fantastic example of using technology creatively, on a small scale, to achieve results that would take far longer to achieve via the traditional top-down methodology. Dr. Ratlib sums this up nicely: "We're trying to adapt to the very rapidly changing environment, and provide ourselves with tools that industry would take years to give us."
Kudos to the radiologist MacGyvers!