Advanced Radiology Information System

The innovative features of an advanced radiology information system (RIS) are presented in this paper. The interoperability of RIS with the other intra-hospital information systems that interacts with, dealing with the compatibility and open architecture issues, are accomplished by two novel mechanisms. The first one is the particular message handling system that is applied for the exchange of information, according to the Health Level Seven (HL7) protocol's specifications and serves the transfer of medical and administrative data among the RIS applications and data store unit. The same mechanism allows the secure and HL7-compatible interactions with the hospital information system (HIS) too. The second one implements the translation of information between the formats that HL7 and Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) protocols specify, providing the communication between RIS and Picture and Archive Communication System (PACS). The whole structure ensures the automation of the every-day procedures that the 'medical protocol' specifies and provides its services through a friendly and easy to manage graphical user interface

I. Introduction

RIS's services extend to an administrative and clinical level and support the interactions between the radiology department and the departments beyond this [2]. RIS is a Patient Data Management System for Radiology Exams (PDMS-RE) and manages the ordering and scheduling of patients' imaging examinations. Like all the other medical information systems that are applied in a hospital or other healthcare center, RIS is not a totally autonomous system and its interaction with other systems is necessary for the integration of the medical procedures that it serves [3], [4]. Two are the main exchange processes of RIS with other such systems [5]. On the one hand, RIS has to communicate with PACS that is responsible for the internal procedures that are performed into the radiology department [6]. These are mainly the retrieval, processing and archiving of medical imaging files. RIS needs to collect this information properly as to produce the final medical report for each examination. On the other hand, RIS interacts with HIS for the retrieval of patient's information, update of his medical record for the new exams and forwarding the data for the billing procedures accordingly.