Clinical Workflow Shelf for MRI Study Persistence
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
In healthcare environments, radiologists and other clinicians face significant delays due to the time-consuming process of opening and switching between multiple MRI studies, which disrupts their workflow and productivity.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a workflow management system that allows users to create and manage a 'shelf' for patient indicators, enabling easy retrieval and persistence of patient information across sessions and workstations, reducing the need for repetitive mouse clicks and minimizing delays between study reviews.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a clinician opens and switches between multiple MRI studies sequentially, then complete review of all studies is achieved, but significant time delays occur between studies
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-loads multiple MRI studies into the workstation memory before the clinician needs to review them. When a clinician opens a study, the system has already prepared subsequent studies in the background, so switching between studies becomes instantaneous rather than requiring sequential opening of each study one at a time
Solution Approach 2:
The system maintains continuous background processes that include pre-loading, indexing, and preparing multiple studies simultaneously while the clinician is reviewing one study. This ensures that when the clinician switches to the next study, the transition is seamless and continuous work flow is maintained without interruption or waiting time
2Ease of operation
If a clinician uses traditional mouse clicks to open and close studies, then study navigation is achieved, but workflow is disrupted and productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically manages study navigation and switching without requiring manual mouse clicks from the clinician. The workstation autonomously loads the next study in the sequence, manages the study queue, and maintains the review workflow without human intervention for each individual study transition, thereby eliminating disruptive manual operations
Solution Approach 2:
The system replaces the mechanical manual mouse-click-based navigation with an automated software-driven study switching mechanism. Instead of requiring the clinician to physically click to open/close studies, the system uses programmed workflows, background processes, and automated study management to handle navigation, substituting manual mechanical operations with automated digital processes
3Device complexity
If patient information is not persisted across sessions, then system simplicity is maintained, but workflow interruption and loss of work items occur
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a virtual copy or snapshot of the clinician's work items, patient information, and review progress and stores it in a persistent database. This copy survives across different workstations and sessions, allowing the clinician to resume work from where they left off without losing any information, while the actual system structure remains relatively simple
4Speed
If multiple studies are loaded into memory simultaneously, then study review speed improves, but system resource consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-loads and indexes multiple studies into memory in advance during off-peak times or in the background, so when the clinician needs to access them, the studies are already ready for instant retrieval and review. This preliminary preparation eliminates the need for heavy real-time loading operations during actual use
Solution Approach 2:
The system loads more studies into memory than the clinician immediately needs (excessive action), maintaining a buffer of pre-loaded studies ready for rapid access. This ensures that when switching between studies, the system can pull from the pre-loaded buffer instantly rather than loading studies on-demand, accepting temporary higher resource consumption for significantly improved access speed
Data Source
AI summary
Certain embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for interruption workflow management in a clinical enterprise. Certain embodiments provide an interruption workflow management system for a clinical enterprise. The system includes a worklist including a plurality of patient indicators representing patients for which tasks are to be performed by a user. The system also includes a patient panel displaying patient information associated with a patient indicator selected from the worklist. The system further includes a patient indicator shelf holding one or more patient indicators from at least one of the worklist and the patient panel for later retrieval in response to user input. The patient indicator shelf facilitates restoration of a patient indicator from the patient indicator shelf to display in the patient panel in response to user input.