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Challenges of Implementing Picture Archiving and Communication System in Multiple Hospitals: Perspectives of Involved Staff and Users

  • Systems-Level Quality Improvement
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Abstract

Today, despite the advantages of the PACS system, its implementation in some healthcare organizations faces many challenges. One of the important factors in the successful implementation of a PACS system is identifying and prioritizing the challenges from the perspectives of involved staff and user of this system. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine and compare the challenges of implementing PACS from perspectives these users in educational hospitals. This study was conducted on all IT and medical equipment staff, and radiology residents (n = 140) in Kerman University of Medical Sciences (KUMS) and Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS) in 2016. The data were collected through two researcher-made questionnaires. Their validity was approved by radiologists, IT staff, and medical informatics specialists and their reliability through calculation of Cronbach’s Alpha (0.969 and 0.795). We used Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) to compare the scores given by three groups of participants in the challenges and Univariate Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to compare the scores in two universities. The participants believed that technical challenges were more important than other challenges (x̄=3.74, SD = 0.7). IT experts (x̄=3.87, SD = 1) and radiology residents (x̄=3.95, SD = 0.9) gave the higher scores to the “shortage of high quality monitors” factor and medical equipment experts (x̄=4.26, SD = 0.87) to the “low speed of communication networks” factor among all technical challenges. The mean scores given to technical (x̄=76.1, SD = 13.5) and managerial (x̄=16, SD = 5.9) challenges in SUMS were more than the scores of the same challenges in KUMS (x̄=69.9, SD = 15.7) and (x̄=11.9, SD = 6.4) (p < 0.05). The technical challenges are the most common challenges to PACS implementation, and different universities experience different levels of technical challenges. Eliminating implementation challenges can reduce the risk of failure in the utilization process. Based on the results of this study, providing necessary infrastructures such as appropriate monitors and upgraded IT equipment can prevent many of the PACS implementation challenges.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the IT administrators, medical equipment experts and radiology residents for their participation in this study.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study resulted from research project No. 96.10.60.301 funded by the Medical Informatics Research Center, Kerman University of Medical Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Informatics Research Center, Institute for Future Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran

    Reza Khajouei

  2. Department of Health Information Sciences, Faculty of Management and Medical Information Sciences, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran

    Reza Khajouei

  3. Health Service Management Research Center, Institute for Futures Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Haft-bagh Highway, 7616911320, Kerman, Iran

    Maryam Eslami Jahromi

  4. Department of Health Information Sciences, Faculty of Management and Medical Information Sciences, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran

    Arefeh Ameri

  5. Medical Informatics Research Center, Institute for Future Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran

    Arefeh Ameri

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  1. Reza Khajouei
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Correspondence to Maryam Eslami Jahromi.

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The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Research Involving Human Participants - Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Kerman University of Medical Sciences (Code of Ethics: IR.KMU.REC.1396.1343).

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Khajouei, R., Jahromi, M.E. & Ameri, A. Challenges of Implementing Picture Archiving and Communication System in Multiple Hospitals: Perspectives of Involved Staff and Users. J Med Syst 43, 182 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-019-1319-0

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