Opportunities for Reconceptualization and Redesign
The research findings were grouped into three categories: environmental characteristics, system characterisitics, and opportunities for reconceptualization and redesign. The following summarizes the opportunities for reconceptualization and redesign findings. Two of these, 'Supporting Conversation Between Image Stakeholders' and 'Reducing Visual Clutter and Redundancy of Controls', were ranked the highest priority out of all research findings to inform design decisions.
Supporting Conversation Between Image Stakeholders - Collaboration between radiologists, technologists, referring physicians, and other image stakeholders is fundamental to the diagnostic process - radiologists often need to contact a referring physician to learn more about a patient’s history or inquire about other contextual information essential in developing an accurate diagnosis or recommendation. Multiple times the CMU team observed radiologists struggling to locate and connect with referring physicians – sometimes in time critical situations.
Learning and Sharing of Best Practices - There are many educational benefits to the collaborative nature of radiologists’ work. As some users within an organization become more familiar with PACS tools, shortcuts, and features, these findings are passed on through informal communication and observation.
Reduce Visual Clutter and Redundancy of Controls - Throughout the research phase redundancy was uncovered in both information and controls. Worklist and patient study information, for example, is duplicated across PACS, transcription systems, and the RIS. For any piece of data there are likely to be multiple methods and systems that could be used for retrieval or manipulation. Radiologists noted that they only ever used a subset of the available tools to begin with, so the impact of duplicate controls is especially high.