The application, which runs on IBM's Blue Spruce platform, lets experts collaborate over the Web in a browser window that displays feeds ranging from a high-definition video conference to patient scans and charts.

A group of staff at Brigham and Women's Hospital of Boston have been testing the platform as a way to bring together analysis from experts with different specialties, said Francine Jacobson, a thoracic radiologist at the hospital.

The application lets a radiologist reviewing a CAT scan, for example, also obtain analysis from a patient's lung test, data that could lend insight to the CAT scan but that radiologists often neglect, she said.

Live or recorded interaction in the program could also be used to train physicians on computers at both ends of a connection, Jacobson added.

The application includes a virtual whiteboard that lets observers on one end immediately see markups drawn by an expert on the other computer's screen. That ability lets the two or more sides point out problems to each other in a patient scan.