Requirements for the introduction of new imaging technologies to existing strucures

For the last decades new imaging technologies were created and offer great advantages in the diagnosis and thus treatment of diseases. To fully use their potential the technology has to be integrated in the hospitals working environment, especially into computer networks since they produce large numbers of digital data. With the introduction of 3D-echocardiography to the pediatric cardiology of the Universitätsmedizin Göttingen a variety of problems arose. Some of them concerned the new technology itself, others were caused by already existing imaging technology and the IT infrastructure. During the problem analysis, displayed in UML models the shareholders of the information system were identified and their requirements collected. The coexistence of technologies of different ages causes a large part of the problems. Current hospital information systems and imaging technologies broadly use standards of data procession and interfaces optimized for the hospital environment. Older technology does not implement those interfaces. Due to economic stress in healthcare acquired technologies can only be replaced after a long time span. So the major challenge of the introduction and clinical use of new imaging technologies is to anticipate the new technology as well as integrating older technology in contemporary hospital information systems and working environments. As the result of the findings during the analysis a general layout of such an information system was created in UML.2014-04-3