Modifying clinicians use of PACS imaging

The purpose of this study was to determine whether it would be possible to minimise the delay that occurs between the time a radiological image becomes available for viewing on PACS and the time that it is actually seen by the requesting physician. The study was conducted at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth Western Australia. Participants in the study were all junior doctors. The first part of the study measured the current time delay between images being available on PACS and actually being viewed. In the second part of the study, the doctors were notified by a paging system when the images were available. The reduction in time delay was then compared. Following pager notification, the mean average time delay reduced from a mean of 180.02 min (95 % confidence interval (CI), 135.1 to 225 min) to a mean of 33.94 min (95 % CI, 24.1 to 43.8 min; P < 0.0001). The study has demonstrated that it is possible to modify clinicians' usage of PACS; however, there remain questions regarding the sustainability of such an intervention and the impact that this may have on overall patient outcome. There may be potential for integration of the rapidly expanding technologies such as tablets, iPads and iPhones in order to automate this type of notification and this may be a focus of future research.