%0 Journal Article
%T Invited Speech: Workstations: Software Issues
%A Paolo Inchingolo & Andrea Poli
%J Iranian Journal of Radiology
%D 2007
%I Tehran University of Medical Sciences
%X Since 1998, the worldwide interoperability initia-tive "Integrating the Health Care Enterprise" (IHE) has started the process of innovating the clinical and organizational workflow inside and among the Healthcare Enterprises. The process has had a strong impact in Radiological Procedures and nowadays is introducing a new way of thinking in developing and managing all the systems involved."nEven the old monolithic concept of Radiological Workstation is changing toward a new composite one. The new vision follows strictly the concept of a collection of IHE "actors" and thus the workstation is a combination of different bricks (the actors), each one with its own features and role. The clinician, with the consultancy of administrative staff and clinical engineers when needed, is able to choose the "workstation system" that fits exactly his particular needs in his clinical practice. "nBesides these interesting aspects, IHE has regulated the access to information stored outside the hospital, as for example that recorded in the "Med-ical Imaging Resource Centers" (MIRC) Servers, or on a variety of "Electronic Health Record" (EHR) systems: Furthermore, IHE has offered original integration profile solutions for the remote exchange of the data themselves, as the Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) profile. These features are already available in some workstations "of the future", as for example O3-RWS by our O3 Consortium."nA workstation that implements these features or roles, allows the clinician to have all the relevant patient's information on the workstation at the same time, regardless it has been taken from the patient's clinical history, or from literature of spe-cial cases or from a local PACS. The availability of all these data jointly helps improving a safe health care of the patient."nIn the near future, the next step of the IHE process will be the introduction of a different way of reporting. The integration profile called "Reporting Workflow" (RWF) has been defined in details by IHE and it has been already implemented in some workstations as the above cited O3-RWS. RWF, together with the new state-of-the-art methods for building up a "Structured Report" (see the wonderful work done in Tehran in this field by the group of Dr. Fatehi), seems to be really promising, as a powerful tool for the entire healthcare providers' staff.
%U http://journals.tums.ac.ir/PdfMed.aspx?pdf_med=/upload_files/pdf/3977.pdf&manuscript_id=3977