Development and utilisation of a real-time display of logged in radiology information system users

In radiology departments with multiple geographically separated reporting areas, locating radiologists can be challenging. We have developed an in-house solution to minimise the time spent looking for radiologists utilising near real-time data stored with our radiology information system (RIS). An auto updating Extensible Markup Language (XML) data feed from our RIS provider provides information about users logged into the RIS. It includes user names, their contact details and specialty interests, their location within the department, and a time stamp of last recorded dictation or report verification. The information is then displayed on our internal intranet and on a self-refreshing screen in our main department corridor. In order to estimate time savings made through the tools creation, usage statistics were calculated and combined with assessments of time taken to find a named radiologist prior to the tools implementation. Over the month of April 2009, there were 2,798 hits on the locator page. Radiologists were responsible for 1,248 hits and radiology administration staff for 1,550 hits. The average time for using the tool was calculated at 5 s. Reviewing a roster and calling/paging a radiologist took on average 30 s, and a full walk around of the department took 195 s. Through utilisation of near real-time data available within our RIS system and display of these data in an accessible form, we have developed a tool that has realised savings of up to 16 h of radiologist reporting time per week.