No abstract

In patients with acute pancreatitis, extrapancreatic inflammation assessed by abdominal CT scan and quantified with the EPIC score allows accurate estimation of disease severity and mortality within 24 h of admission.

Successfully introducing a new technology in a healthcare setting is not a walk in the park. Many barriers need to be overcome, not only technical and financial but also human barriers. In this study, we focus on the human barriers to health-care information systems' implementation. We monitored the acceptance of a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) by radiologists and hospital physicians in a large Belgian university hospital. Hereto, questionnaires were taken pre-implementation (T1) and 1 year after the radiology department stopped printing film (T2). The framework we used to perform the study was the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. Main findings were that both groups were positive toward PACS prior to the introduction and that each group was even more positive at T2 with extensive PACS experience. In general, the ratings of the radiologists were higher than those of the physicians, as the radiologists experienced more of the benefits of PACS and had to use PACS throughout the day. Two factors were salient for predicting users' intention to use PACS: the usefulness of PACS (performance expectancy) and the availability of support of any kind (facilitating conditions). The results show that our approach was successful. Both radiologists and physicians give evidence of an excellent level of user acceptance. We can conclude that the implementation of PACS into our hospital has succeeded.

The results support the value of contrast-detail phantom analysis for evaluating clinical image quality in chest radiography.

In this study, teachers' acceptance and use of an educational portal is assessed based on data from two sources: usage data (number of logins, downloads, uploads, reactions and pages viewed) and an online acceptance questionnaire. The usage data is extracted on two occasions from the portal's database: at survey completion (T1) and twenty-two months later (T2). Framework for this study is ('heavy'). The observed use data show that the portal is primarily used to search for and download material, rather than for sharing material or information. The use data at T2 show that teachers become more efficient in their search behavior and that the majority of the teachers use the portal more frequently. Guidelines are proposed to policymakers and school boards aiming to introduce a similar technology to teachers.