At this year's InfoRad, exhibitors are examining the myriad facets of the integrated healthcare enterprise. Technological changes have sparked new challenges, some broad-based, other arcane.

Radiologists at the University of Padua, Italy, for example, are scrutinizing the practical and legal aspects of the digital signature for radiology reports. Italian laws define the digital document, legal aspects of the digital signature, and technical rules for signing the digital document, including the asymmetric key couple (private and public keys), the document hash, and the use of smart cards. The Padua team has encrypted the radiological report and the digital sign by public key and stored them on an optical disk. Only authorized addresses having a smart card with the corresponding public key can read the report.