(1) implementation of a networked radiology department based on IHE transactions in a heterogeneous environment with more than 10 different vendors
(2) clear benefits resulting from improved workflow consistency of clinical data and increased productivity
(3) reliable access directly to the online/nearline PACS, Web-Server and long term archive

The Hospital Nuremberg founded in 1897 is a teaching hospital of the University of Erlangen with 2500 patient beds and one of the largest community hospitals in Europe. Since 1994 there are 2 locations: one in North and one in South of Nuremberg. In the North site (>35 buildings, 1500 beds, 70,000 in-patients annually) 80,000 exams/year (approx.6,5 TB) are performed for departments of thoracic and abdominal surgery, pneumology, obstetrics, gastroenterology, oncology, geriatrics, urology, ENT, ophthalmology, endocrinology, psychiatry,
hemostasiology, radiotherapy and nuclear medicine. In the past 3 years several IHE transactions were implemented in a step-by-step approach to integrate products from more than 10 vendors, including DICOM Store, MWL, Storage Commitment, Q/R and Print. All modalities are connected to PACS and workstations using DICOM Store, even the legacy systems (using Framegrabbers). Within the IHE Scheduled Workflow Profile the DICOM MWL is implemented on all modalities (except for the 2 legacy systems). The HIS is HL7 based and uses a communication server to provide the DICOM MWL for the modalities. Improvements gained: reduced number of mistakes relating to patient & study demographic errors, no loss of images/reports due to simultaneous availability at several locations, enhanced patient throughput, reduced labour costs and film cost reduction by 80% due to softcopy reading (use of films has been limited to referring physicians only).