Many Radiology Departments are contemplating a move from manual operations to Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) based operations. A question remains regarding the true cost-benefit of serious investments in PACS based operations. A methodology has been established by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in cooperation with the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill which addresses aspects of the cost-benefit analysis of manual versus digital operations within a Radiology Department. The methodology has evolved as a collection of modeling tools and techniques. Early tools included spreadsheet models of existing activities within the UNC Radiology Department. Second generation tools now include deterministic network flow modeling and discrete event queuing network modeling packages. Complementary queuing models have been developed to separate the modeling of Department workload size and mix from the model of the man/machine system that services the workload. A range of performance measures have been incorporated into the second generation models. Among these measures are workload throughput, man/machine resource utilization, system and subsystem responses times, and resource availability measures.

Date Published: 27 June 1988
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 0914, Medical Imaging II, (27 June 1988); doi: 10.1117/12.968741

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0914:
Medical Imaging II
Samuel J. Dwyer III; Roger H. Schneider; Samuel J. Dwyer III; Roger H. Schneider; Roger H. Schneider; Samuel J. Dwyer III, Editor(s)