Online availability check of teleradiology components.

For a region-wide teleradiology network in Germany a vendor-independent Uptime-server concept was defined. The Uptime-server was realized for the availability check and prospective error-detection of the emergency teleradiology servers and clients based on encrypted digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM)-e-mail transfers. The concept and the experiences of 2 years of use with more than 30 clients and servers in 15 hospitals and in nine other regional partners are shown.