The impact of new imaging technology on worldwide health care, research, and teaching: fifth international symposium, August 1992.

At the end of the final session, one of the co-chairs, Ronald L. Arenson (University of California, San Francisco) summarized the main points made at the conference. He mentioned that the talks had shown both the differences and similarities among the world's nations and that computers have become vital tools for radiologic practice and research. Dr. Arenson discussed four major themes that the symposium had brought into focus: the importance of cost-effectiveness analyses; the need to provide radiologic equipment to developing countries; the significance of worldwide training programs in radiology; and the search for continuing support for research. The government, industry, and academia all have great interest in cost-effectiveness. Radiologists in the future will be required even more than in the past to justify expenditures on equipment and to explain the benefits of sophisticated examinations. As leaders in radiology, the participants were encouraged to take the "offensive" in showing how new, admittedly expensive, technology can save lives and money in the long run--especially in terms of early diagnosis. Dr. Arenson suggested a conference was needed to address the single issue of cost-effectiveness of radiologic medicine and to start a "think tank" that could develop approaches to the problems of rationally calculating cost-effectiveness. Research is needed to provide an inexpensive field radiology unit for use in developing countries. The fields of industry and research have made tremendous progress in providing sophisticated equipment appropriate for hospitals in industrialized nations, but doctors in developing countries need mobile units, which are especially useful when one radiologist must serve tens of thousands of people. Dr. Arenson suggested exploring the use of computed radiography, so that no film or processing supplies are necessary, and providing through that unit a link over telephone lines to hospitals with radiologic expertise for special cases. Worldwide training of radiologists must move toward the goals of both standardizing educational requirements and providing education that is relevant for each country's situation (e.g., life expectancy, GNP per capita, leading causes of death). Also, training must be provided for technologists and other health care workers--particularly in regions in which there are too few radiologists. Such training could be done in conjunction with the field unit described in the preceding paragraph, so that examinations could be performed by technologists in the field and then the images could be interpreted via computer hook-up by radiology experts in large hospitals that may be far away from the patient.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)