Calabrese Raffaele, Beltrame Marco, Accardo Agostino
Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, Via Valerio 10, 34127, Trieste, Italy.
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria "Ospedali Riuniti", Via Farneto 3, Trieste, Italy.
J Digit Imaging. 2016 Dec;29(6):658-664. doi: 10.1007/s10278-016-9870-4.
Today, many hospitals have a running enterprise picture archiving and communication system (PACS) and their administrators should have the tools to measure the system activity and, in particular, how much it is used. The information would be valuable for decision-makers to address asset management and the development of policies for its correct utilization and eventually start training initiatives to get the best in resource utilization and operators' satisfaction. On the economic side, a quantitative method to measure the usage of the workstations would be desirable to better redistribute existing resources and plan the purchase of new ones. The paper exploits in an unconventional way the potential of the IHE Audit Trail and Node Authentication (ATNA) profile: it uses the data generated in order to safeguard the security of patient data and to retrieve information about the workload of each PACS workstation. The method uses the traces recorded, according to the profile, for each access to image data and to calculate how much each station is used. The results, constituted by measures of the frequency of PACS station usage suitably classified and presented according to a convenient format for decision-makers, are encouraging. In the time of the spending review, the careful management of available resources is the top priority for a healthcare organization. Thanks to our work, a common medium such as the ATNA profile appears a very useful resource for purposes other than those for which it was born. This avoids additional investments in management tools and allows optimization of resources at no cost.
如今，许多医院都运行着企业级图像存档与通信系统（PACS），其管理人员应具备衡量系统活动的工具，尤其是该系统的使用程度。这些信息对于决策者进行资产管理、制定正确使用该系统的政策以及最终启动培训计划以实现资源利用最大化和操作人员满意度提升而言非常有价值。在经济方面，需要一种定量方法来衡量工作站的使用情况，以便更好地重新分配现有资源并规划新资源的采购。本文以一种非常规方式利用了整合医疗企业（IHE）审计跟踪与节点认证（ATNA）规范的潜力：它利用生成的数据来保障患者数据的安全，并获取有关每个PACS工作站工作量的信息。该方法使用根据规范记录的每次图像数据访问的踪迹，来计算每个工作站的使用程度。结果由PACS工作站使用频率的测量值构成，这些测量值经过适当分类，并以一种方便决策者的格式呈现，结果令人鼓舞。在支出审查时期，对可用资源进行谨慎管理是医疗保健机构的首要任务。得益于我们的工作，诸如ATNA规范这样的通用媒介对于其诞生目的之外的其他目的而言似乎是一种非常有用的资源。这避免了在管理工具上的额外投资，并能免费实现资源优化。
