National Guard Health Affairs

Simplify Clinical Practice

Simplify Clinical Practice

In the mid-1990s it was already evident that the conventional type of patient administration, X-ray film management and reporting would have no future, for the following reasons:

  • Referrals to X-ray examinations on paper forms that were delivered by messengers
  • Recording of patient data in index card boxes and time-consuming searches
  • Localization and retrieval of legacy X-ray films from various film archives spread across different sections of the building, and some films and /or reports were irretrievable
  • Unnecessary repeats in the event of incorrect exposures
  • Time wasted making the X-ray image, dictating, typing and reviewing the X-ray report, through to arrival by messenger at the referring ward.

All this meant unnecessary staff activity and avoidable delays on the way toward a rapid diagnosis, which has been the basic requirement for targeted therapy ever since reliable, sophisticated electronic systems became ready for the market due to technological progress.

Last but not least, increased environmental awareness called for a move away from the film-screen system based on silver compounds, which had been in use for decades, along with film chemistry and disposal.

Also, a further reduction in radiation burden was an increasing challenge.


The solution to all these problems was identified as being the gradual implementation of an integrated full version of RIS-PACS (RIS = Radiology Information System, PACS = Picture Archiving and Communication System). The fact that such a substantial intervention in administration could be implemented smoothly at the largest hospital in Saudi Arabia, despite full clinical routine, is not only due to the several months of preparation and training for staff but also to the highly motivated employees in all the departments concerned and dependable advice provided by GE Healthcare.
RIS-PACS and speech recognition speed up the procedure of any high-quality radio logical examination, achieving a therapeutically useful gain in time for clinicians and patients, so they make a valuable contribution on the way to ensuring satisfied patients.

The project will cover Riyadh, Dammam, Al Hassa & Jeddah National Guard Health Affair institutes.

Each site will have diagnostic workstations at the Radiology department with Long term and short term Archive. In addition, some area will have specialized clinical review workstations with high resolution. The referral physicians will be able to access all images through the web.

Also, doctors will be able to send and receive the images from / to other National Guard institutes in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the following are in brief the main feature and benefit of such system at huge organization like National Guard Health Affairs.