A new methodology to design distributed medical diagnostic centers

In a distributed diagnostic center (DDC), patients' examinations (exams) are performed in remote units (RUs) and the collected data (images, lab exams, etc.) are sent to expertise diagnostic units (DUs) for evaluation. The DDC's quality of service per exam is considered through several factors, such as patient's waiting time, RU-DU communicating load, expert's occupancy, priority, administrative cost, etc. This paper introduces a new methodology for DDC design by controlling the above factors. We consider any RU through exams' sources and any DU through exams' buffers and servers. Any exam created by a RU source is temporarily stored into a DU buffer and then is evaluated by a DU server. The proposed methodology is based on a buffers' model that evaluates the total RU-DU exams' traffic load, taking into account the sources' productivity and the exams' priority. Simulating the exams' delay in the sources, buffers and servers we affect the DDC's performance. Simulating results, using real data acquired by Hellenic DDCs in the private domain, are also demonstrated.