A collaborative partnership between physicians and the laboratory is more important than ever. This requires addressing the five major complaints that physicians have regarding the laboratory within the context of six key characteristics of doctors. The complaints concern: timeliness of information, completeness, accessibility, providing information in a suitable form, and making it understandable to time-pressed physicians. Working effectively with physicians to achieve an immaculate image means understanding why they tend toward control, have difficulty with conceptual presentations, and are quick to stereotype. It also means understanding how to capitalize on their tendency to respect expertise and reward it with loyalty. Establishing a favorable image requires creating a perception of cooperative proactivity based on sensitive performance.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

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Integrating your radiology information system in a complex computing environment.

Radiology departments are a major source of important information regarding patient care. Such information is valuable in its own right but also provides significant added value when correlated with other information, including other clinical diagnoses, therapies, utilization, costs of care and outcomes. In the past, hospitals/imaging centers have typically sought the "best" RIS to meet the needs of the department and its user constituencies (physicians, nurses, medical records, etc.). Function and feature drove the RIS selection process. "Best of breed" was the rallying cry. Having multiple systems and vendors requires information systems and departmental staff to maintain expertise and support in each system and to interact with each vendor. The best-of-breed approach has a number of hidden costs. Before buying, ask "Is the best-of-breed RIS so much better than a more integrated solution that the support and integration efforts are worth it?" This is a complex question involving true needs, perceived needs, wants (justifiable or not), ego, politics, institutional future plans and more. Effective integration in a complex computing environment involves both technical processes and people processes. A cooperative, team-oriented process with the appropriate allocation of staff functions based on expertise and experience is needed. In general, the radiology department is best able to manage operations of the RIS. The information systems department should retain responsibility for housing the RIS computer and performing routine backup procedures as well as monitoring RIS performance. Both organizations can contribute to a highly successful integrated system operation based on their respective knowledge and experience. The IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) is a joint initiative of the RSNA and HIMSS (Healthcare Information Systems Society) to stimulate the integration of information and imaging systems. The initiative will promote enterprise-wide sharing of data via established standards. The organizations, at their annual national meetings, will provide a visible forum and showcase of integration capabilities (most recently at HIMSS 2000).

Computer Systems↗

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Integrated reporting and interpretation of clinical results.

Some clinical information systems vendors are making significant progress in improving the presentation of integrated clinical information to the physician. Many, however, are emphasizing advanced access and distribution methods, (e.g., Internet) rather than enhancing presentation formats and content. Although we seemingly have the technology tools in hand, and are closer today than ever before, a simple, easy to interpret, user- and context-sensitive presentation of a set of correlated clinical information remains an elusive goal.

Clinical Laboratory Information Systems↗

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Making it work: planning and executing a successful LIS installation.

This article relates how to plan and execute a successful laboratory information system (LIS) installation for those installing a first LIS, converting to a new LIS, or upgrading the current LIS. It covers the planning process, schedule adherence, vendor relationships, project team management, and system readiness, as well as post-installation issues.

Clinical Laboratory Information Systems↗