Towards A Unified Radiology Information & Reporting System: Challenges and Way Forwards for the Developing Countries

A radiology report serves as an intermediary between a radiologist and referring clinician for suggesting appropriate treatment to the patients, aimed at better healthcare management. It is essentially a tool that assists radiologists in conveying their input to the patients and clinicians regarding positive or negative findings on a case. The objective of this paper is to discuss and propose Radiology Information & Reporting System (RIRS), highlight challenges governing its implementation and suggest way forwards towards its effective implementation across the public sector tertiary care institutions of Pakistan. In the end, it is concluded that the proposed RIRS would potentially offer enormous benefits in terms of cost savings, reporting accuracy, faster processing and operational efficiency as opposed to the conventionally available manual radiology reporting procedures and systems.