A literature review on communication between picture archiving and communication systems and radiology information systems and/or hospital information systems

The purpose of this literature review is to present the concepts surroundin g the issue of communication between imaging systems and information system s in radiology and the literature about them. Picture archiving and communi cation systems (PACS) were developed to combine viewing of modality images, archiving, and distribution of images. When PACS is integrated/interfaced with radiology information systems (RIS) or hospital information systems (H IS), it can merge patient demographics, medical records, and images, To add ress several issues surrounding communication between PACS and HIS/RIS and to make interface development easier and faster, various organizations have developed standards for the formatting and transfer of clinical data. Addi tional work continues to better handle these issues. Communication protocol Health Level 7 (HL7) is a standard application protocol used for electroni c text data exchange in health care by most HIS/RIS, The imaging communicat ion protocol for PACS is the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard specification protocol that describes the means of format ting and exchanging images and associated information. Copyright (C) 1999 b y W.B. Saunders Company.