Design And Implementation Of HIS/PACS Integrative Solution

At the moment, the primary method of medical treatmentin the hospital is based on every kind of examinations by theInspection Operations Sections, such as radiology department. Withthe expeditious development of electronic technology, theimprovement of biomedical research and the digital trend of CT,MR,CR/DR examination instruments, it has been the developmentalfoundation to implement the digital hospital through all theexamination instruments connection via internal network in order tomanage the medical image more effectively. To resolve thecommunication problem between the examination instruments andcomputers, DICOM standard was introduced by North AmericanRadiology Academy in 1980s. This standard provided a series ofprotocols to satisfy the requirements of the communication betweeninstruments and workstations after the continuous improvement anddevelopment for ten years. Up to now, all the examination instrumentscan support this standard. In the same time, it will be implementinginto the current PACS software system in the hospital. In the same time, PACS system, coexisting with DICOM, wasapplied to hospital work too, which is used to resolved dataacquisition, transmission, accessing and storage of images generatedby examination instruments. PACS appeared in the late of 1980s,which contained three stages: (1) characteristic of stand-aloneworkstation, realizing data transmission between PC and imageinstrument; (2) Mini-PACS's characteristic of network station after2001, realizing data transmission between PC and each instruments inradiation faculty; (3) Full-PACS's characteristic of combination withHIS, realizing information share between HIS and PACS.Most PACS subjects are still at the second stage and have thedisadvantages of information insufficiency without the combinationwith HIS. First, registers can't directly use the patients' information inHIS, needing newly record from register station, which increase theburdens of workers and the waiting time of patients. Second, theinefficient registrations are based on the hand-writing documents.Third, the examinations are based on first payment, or the freeinformation will appear, which increase the trouble of patients. Last,clinicians must waiting for the films for description, which is a kind oftime wasting and uselessness of PACS.Currently, the most popular integration technology of HIS/ PACSincludes three different types principally, i.e. Low-Level combination,High-Level combination and Full-Level combination. Based on thepractical situations in the Xijing hospital, the subject realized datacombination, including selection of high level combination method, using exclusive chart space transmission data, trigger synchronizationdata and storage procedure of payment backfill.The designed project has been implementing and working properlyfor one year in the Xijing hospital. It received complimentary reviewsbecause of satisfied the entire requirements by the clinics. This projectprovided a successful case for combination of HIS and PACS.