NEURORADIOLOGY WORKSTATION READING IN AN INTERHOSPITAL ENVIRONMENT - A 19 MONTH STUDY

Two workstations (WS) each with two, 2500 line display monitors were i nstalled in the in-patient and the out-patient neuroradiology reading areas for inter-hospital workstation readings. These WSs are part of t he display component of a hospital-integrated picture archiving and co mmunication system (PACS). Direct digital neuro images from 10 CT and MR scanners located at various buildings from two medical centers are first transmitted to the PACS database and then distributed to these t wo WSs automatically. This paper attempts to answer two questions. Fir st, do the WSs facilitate neuroradiology operation? Second, does it co st less for preparing WS reading than that for the traditional film re ading? Two parameters, the ''time required before images become availa ble for reading after the examination'' and a ''workstation utilizatio n index'' were derived as a means for answering these two questions. N ineteen months of clinical data were collected and analyzed. The resul ts demonstrate that the workstation utilization index goes up from 40% in September 1994 when the WS was first introduced to over 80% in Mar ch 1996. This upward trend substantiates the hypothesis that these WSs do facilitate the neuroradiology operation. The derived results also exhibit that it costs much less to prepare images for WS reading than for film reading. Other indirect results derived from this study inclu ding the WS utilization hours, WS functions used, and the time duratio n of each WS session are also presented. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd .