Patent ID: 8600771

Claim:
A system operating on a computer based Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) for generating a medical teaching file message, said system comprising: an image identifier providing a continuously updated and indexed image label to each medical image in a group of medical images within an image database based at least in part upon image information contained in a PACS; a rule based image selection search engine residing on the PACS searching the indexed image labels of said medical images within said image database based on a set of selection rules input into the PACS by a user, and generating a subset of medical images from said group of medical images based upon said selection rules; an interface workstation configured to accept search criteria, display search results and display said medical images; a supporting data selection search engine residing on the PACS accepting a free text search query for medical teaching file supporting data in the field of the subject matter of the medical images to accompany said subset of medical images from said interface workstation, said free text search query for said supporting data based on search criteria entered via said interface workstation, said search engine communicating with a search crawler; and said search crawler searching at least one healthcare information system's databases outside of the PACS for said medical teaching file supporting data in the field of the subject matter of the medical images based on the free text search query entered by the user via said interface workstation, said healthcare information system's databases including at least alphanumeric data and image data, said supporting data search engine providing said medical teaching file supporting data in the field of the subject matter of the medical images search results, said search crawler searching both the alphanumeric and the image data based on said free text search query entered by the user via said interface workstation, wherein said image search engine and said supporting data selection search engine populate said interface with the images from said image subset and said medical teaching file supporting data search results via said interface, allowing the user to select medical images and supporting data in the field of the subject matter of the medical images for inclusion in a medical teaching file message, which is assembled and transmitted to a teaching file server for storage.