An academic radiology information system (RIS): A review of the commercialRIS systems, and how an individualized academic RIS can be created and utilized

Current commercial radiology information systems (RIS) are designed for sch eduling, billing, charge collection, and report dissemination. Academic ins titutions have additional requirements for their missions for teaching, res earch and clinical care. The newest versions of commercial RIS offer greate r flexibility than prior systems. We sent questionnaires to Cerner Corporat ion, ADAC Health Care Information Systems, IDX Systems, Per-Se ' Technologi es, and Siemens Health Services regarding features of their products. All o f the products we surveyed offer user customizable fields. However, most pr oducts did not allow the user to expand their product's data table. The sea rch capabilities of the products varied. All of the products supported the Health Level 7 (HL-7) interface and the use of structured query language (S QL). All of the products were offered with an SOL editor for creating custo mized queries and custom reports. All products included capabilities for co llecting data for quality assurance and included capabilities for tracking "interesting cases." though they varied in the functionality offered. No pr oduct offered dedicated functions for research. Alternatively, radiology de partments can create their own client-server Windows-based database systems to supplement the capabilities of commercial systems. Such systems can be developed with "web-enabled" database products like Microsoft Access or App le Filemaker Pro. Copyright (C) 2001 by W.B. Saunders Company.