A low-resource digital infrastructure to streamline viewing and interpretation of radiographic images: A case study of Uganda’s hospital-wide environment

Abstract

Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) are said to improve patient quality of care through timely access to radiological images by clinicians. However, they are costly to be considered for hospital wide environment in low income countries. Ordinary core i3 computer systems (PCs) can provide an affordable and faster alternative solution for PACS workstations. This comparative study assessed the diagnostic accuracy, image quality of ordinary PC systems versus PACS workstations and patient turnaround time (PTAT). Forty images were randomly obtained and viewed by four raters from both PACS and PC. The findings showed modest agreement among raters (kappa 0.644 for PACS and 0.5164 PC) with acceptable diagnostic accuracy for PC (AUC = 0.7990), 97.5% reproduction of images on PC and significant reduction in PTAT after a switch to PC (4.8 min), p < 0.001, suggesting that PC display can improve quality of health care services through timely access to radiographic images.