Changing current practice in urology: Improving guideline development and implementation through stakeholder engagement

Effective stakeholder integration for guideline development should improve outcomes and adherence to clinical practice guidelines

Cost Modelling Of PACS

In a contribution to the Medical Imaging,II conference 1988 the design and construction of a package for PACS cost modelling was advocated. In this paper the main features of such a package are described. A first version of the package, called CAPACITY, is ready and experiences are being collected. The package produces as its main results a comparison oftotal cost differences of a PACS configuration and a film-based system as a function of time. The user has to describe the PACS configuration, the technical characteristics of the various components together with the estimated price (as a function of time). Also for the film based system the costs of the various components have to be defined by the user. The production volume of the hospital and the radiology department is input and used in the critique module that checks the input data supplied against a number of rules of thumb (to be defined by experts). At present the package is being used experimentally within our group. At the next EUROPACS meeting (March 1989) it will be demonstrated and other groups will be invited to use it. It is expected that discussions on the results of the package and analysis of the input data supplied will contribute to convergence of the widely varying opinions about the costs of PACS and the moment PACS will be cost justified (both within the radiology department and in the clinic)