IT services in a completely digitized radiological department: value and benefit of an in-house departmental IT group.
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.
Treitl
M
M
Department for Clinical Radiology, Downtown Campus, Clinical Center of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany. Marcus.Treitl@med.uni-muenchen.de
Wirth
S
S
Lucke
A
A
Villain
S
S
Rieger
J
J
Pfeifer
K J
KJ
Reiser
M
M
D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D019451:Information Management; D007254:Information Science; D011340:Problem Solving; D011872:Radiology Department, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration; D011873:Radiology Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration