A community-based task shifting program in 25 remote indigenous communities in Nunavut, Canada.

Task shifting can improve access, availability, efficiency, and quality of health services in under resourced settings. Task shifting can occur formally or informally within health professions, between health professions, between support staff and health professions, or between lay community members and health professionals. There are currently thousands of Indigenous peoples in Canada's high Arctic, living in remote communities, north of the 60 parallel with limited access to basic medical services.

An overview of digital compression of medical images: can we use lossy image compression in radiology?

The increasing volume of data generated by new imaging modalities such as multislice computed tomography scanners and magnetic resonance imaging justifies the use of lossy compression techniques to decrease the cost of storage and improve the efficiency of transmission over networks for teleradiology or for access to electronic patient records. We summarize here the most commonly used compression techniques and compare their main features. Having conducted an extensive literature review, we present a range of average compression ratios for different modalities and body parts.