Internet-based radiology order-entry, reporting, and workflow management system for coordinating urgent study requests during off-hours.

Abstract

Our aim was to develop a simple, low-cost, Internet-based application for radiology order-entry, reporting, and workflow management during off-hours. The system was quickly accepted by users both within and outside the radiology department, and it required very modest resources to develop, deploy, and support. In a busy on-call setting at a high-volume academic institution, the system described was effective in obtaining more thorough patient histories from referring physicians, reducing the number of telephone calls required, and documenting more rigorously the communication between radiologists and clinical services. These benefits allow the generation of more informative and timely radiology reports.