You have just started a consulting business and have been contacted by a hospital administrator. The administrator wants you to prepare a "white paper" on the subject of PACS and to make it relevant to their particular environment. Some rough equipment and operating cost estimates are to be included. Its just a small consulting contract, so they don't expect a detailed analysis - ten pages maximum. Five pages is probably more than enough. But, if you do a good job, they might give you a big contract next time.
The information that the administrator gives you is as follows: Two 400 bed hospitals have recently merged operations. They are separated by a river, that is a few hundred yards wide, but are within line-of-site. A staff of about 30 radiologists covers both facilities. About 5% of the staff is "on-call" at night, in their homes. The facilities include an outpatient clinic and a sports medicine clinic, both within a few city blocks. One hospital has the emergency room. Both hospitals have intensive care units, and operating rooms. One has a Hospital Information System, the other doesn't. Neither of them have a Radiology Information System. Assume no pre-existing communications infrastructure.

1. Contact Dr. Ritenour if you have any questions or need any hints

2. You are allowed, even encouraged, to consult with each other, search for information on the web, or actually talk to other human beings. However, the final writeup must be your own. Excessively similar papers may be grounds for assignment of an even stranger project.

3. Although this assignment is intended to be fun, the writeup is supposed to be practical, relevant, economically reasonable, formal and dignified. Outlandish, impractical papers will receive poorer grades.

Disclaimer: Any similarity between the hospitals described here and any existing hospitals is purely coincidental