Abstract
To analyze the benefit of a departmental IT group in comparison to support by hospital IT groups or system manufacturers in a completely digitized radiological department. The departmental IT group comprises a fulltime IT specialist, two student assistants and four clinical employees participating 1 day/week. For 18 months IT problems were quantified and specified according to urgency, responsibility and affected system by use of an intranet-based reporting system. For each IT service provider the performance and duration of problem solution was evaluated. In 18 months 3,234 IT problems emerged. 88.7% were solved by the departmental IT group. In 474 cases (14.7%) a solution within 2 h was required. The departmental IT group solved 35.8% within 30 min, system manufacturers needed 18 h 38 min in mean. The departmental IT group solved 90.2% of the problems within a time limit. System manufacturers met the limit in 60.1% with a mean duration of 7 days 21 h. In 6.7% of the cases, support by system manufacturers was indispensable. A considerable proportion of IT problems in completely digitized radiological departments can be solved by a departmental IT group, providing a fast and cost-efficient first-level IT support with effective prevention of major breaks in the workflow. In a small number of cases support by system manufacturers remains necessary.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Mrs. A. Lucke for her excellent support of the departmental IT group.
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This work was orally presented on ECR 2004 in Vienna.
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Treitl, M., Wirth, S., Lucke, A. et al. IT services in a completely digitized radiological department: value and benefit of an in-house departmental IT group. Eur Radiol 15, 1485–1492 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-004-2609-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-004-2609-5