They are not the perfect way to get medical images. A friend called me last week to borrow my external drive because the MRI place gave him a stupid CD he had no drive for.
For what these places charge they should be giving out USB drives like candy. They are so cheap that Micro Center sells 64gb at the counter for like $3 or something. CD/DVD is not a valid option.
Cheap "Chinesium" USB drives can be wildly unreliable, plus they're not write protectable meaning your data could be overwritten or deleted by a shitty app/antivirus, or just get malware transmitted over it.
Optical media has the native feature of being written in immutable sessions so your older data is always preserved instead of overwritten(excluding RW media), and also can be write protected when desired by finalizing the session, plus its long data retention shelf life for archiving purposes compared to cheap flash, all make it a great choice for the uses cases of the medical industry file transfer or personal archival at home.
cheap USB drives have bad data retention. they will not be readable 3 years later if left unpowered and without a chance to relocate/rewrite data. DVD-Rs will last 20ish years
For what these places charge they should be giving out USB drives like candy. They are so cheap that Micro Center sells 64gb at the counter for like $3 or something. CD/DVD is not a valid option.