Radiology information system’s mechanisms: HL7-MHS and HL7/DICOM translation

Abstract

The innovative features of information system, known as, Radiology Information System (RIS), for electronic medical records has shown a good impact in the hospital. The interoperability of RIS with the other Intra-hospital Information Systems that interacts with, dealing with the compatibility and open architecture issues, are accomplished by two novel mechanisms. The first one is the particular message handling system that is applied for the exchange of information, according to the Health Level Seven (HL7) protocol’s specifications and serves the transfer of medical and administrative data among the RIS applications and data store unit. The same mechanism allows the secure and HL7-compatible interactions with the Hospital Information System (HIS) too. The second one implements the translation of information between the formats that HL7 and Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) protocols specify, providing the communication between RIS and Picture and Archive Communication System (PACS).