Table 4 Information on the study hospital, study units, study users, tasks, processes, and policies of PACS

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Academic, tertiary care, medical center including three campuses in southern Taiwan.

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1335 beds; and more than 20,000 annual patient admissions in 2012.

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Complete hospital-wide filmless operation of medical images with PACS.

Study unit

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Department of Medical Imaging. Including sections of abdominal imaging, neuroradiology, abdominal imaging, interventional radiology, thoracic and breast imaging, and nuclear medicine.

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Totally 43 radiologists and 138 RTs.

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The modalities that are provided for imaging diagnosis include traditional X-ray, computed tomography (CT) scan, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, fluoroscopy, angiography, and gamma camera for nuclear medicine imaging.

Study users of PACS

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138 registered RTs who operate the aforementioned imaging modalities.

PACS

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The tasks and process of study users when operate PACS: Login the patient’s information into imaging modality, choose optimal imaging parameter, generate images, post-processing and quality control of the images, upload images to PACS, and recheck the images and associated information in PACS.

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The policies of PACS: The PACS is implemented by INFINITT® with partnership strategy eight years ago and is upgraded to web-based version for three years.

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The patient’s data of the PACS are supplied by a home-made HIS.