Evaluating Free and Open Source Radiology Information System for Automating Workflows at The University Teaching Hospitals - Zambia

In Zambia, the public health sector faces a significant shortage of qualified radiologists, with only few serving a population of 20 million people as of 2023. The negative impact this has had on the radiological workflows is quite profound. In addition to this challenge, is the manual process involved in patient registration, requesting for a modality scan, assigning patient to imaging room as well as writing of reports on interpreted medical images, etc. Thus, the intent of our study was to discover a Free and Open Source Radiology Information System, for automating radiological workflows. A mixed method approach was adopted in collecting both qualitative and quantitative data, here interviews, observations and archival record analysis was conducted to understand the radiological workflows, challenges and collect requirements which guided the discovery and selection of a FOSS RIS platform. A comparative analysis of two main FOSS RIS platforms was undertaken i.e OpenMRS Radiology Module and LibreHealth RIS. Eventually, we adopted OpenMRS with the radiology module and tested its usability or ease of use using the System Usability Scale (SUS). The SUS score grade for the overall usability of the system came out at 79% which is between 68% - 80.3% giving an adjectival rating of Good thereby recommending the adoption of the system at the UTHs radiology department. In conclusion, our research has shown that adopting a FOSS Radiology Information System is a viable solution towards automating radiological workflows in the health sector.