Digital distribution of chest radiographs to intensive care units.

This paper describes the implementation of the Medical Image Access System for Intensive Care Units (MIAS/ICU). MIAS/ICU is a distributed computer system that integrates the collection of computed radiography images with information from the Hospital Information System (HIS) to allow caregivers in two Intensive Care Units (ICUs) at University Medical Center (Tucson, AZ, USA) to view digital chest radiographs on dual-monitor workstations within minutes of the time the exposures are made. The system uses entirely "off-the-shelf" hardware components and software based on widely followed standards. MIAS/ICU is based on an innovative modular software architecture that allows simple incremental expansion of the system, along with enhanced portability among platforms.