As most picture archiving and communication system (PACS) administrators or imaging informatics professionals are aware, the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM, formerly SCAR) is sponsoring an effort to provide certification in the growing field. SIIM members believe that this society is the most qualified to provide guidance in the development of an exam and certification because we are an unbiased nonprofit organization. We are working with the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT) to help develop and administer the test, not because we believe a Certified Imaging Informatics Professional should have a background in radiologic technology but because the ARRT has vast experience with developing and administering examinations.
Many of the people who intend to take the examination have asked how to prepare for it. Of course, attending professional meetings and PACS Administration courses, including those offered by SIIM, are a good way to meet others in the profession as well as to learn new ways to solve problems. We have attempted to put together a reading list for those who also wish to prepare for the examination by reading and studying at home.
The First Set of Resources are for Meetings, Publications, and White Papers Prepared by SIIM
SIIM/SCAR Annual Meeting, http://www.siimweb.org/meetings
SIIM/SCAR Publications, http://www.siimweb.org/publications
Journal of Digital Imaging, http://www.siimweb.org/jdi
Online Abstracts/Full Text for SIIM Members
SIIM/SCAR University Primer Series, http://www.siimweb.org/primers
Security Issues in the Digital Medical Enterprise, Second Edition
Archiving Issues in the Digital Medical Enterprise
Quality Assurance: Meeting the Challenge in the Digital Medical Enterprise
Electronic Reporting in the Digital Medical Enterprise
Decision Support in the Digital Medical Enterprise SCAR News
SIIM/SCAR Position and White Papers, http://www.siimweb.org/whitepapers
Irreversible Compression of Medical Images
Addressing the Coming Radiology Crisis: SCAR TRIP™ Initiative
Transforming Medical Imaging: The First SCAR TRIP™ Conference
SIIM News, http://www.siimweb.org/siimnews
SIIM/SCAR Expert Hotline, http://www.siimweb/experthotline
SCAR University, http://www.siimweb.org/university
SIIM/SCAR PACS Consultant List, http://www.siimweb.org/resources
The Following Books are Recommended by a Number of SIIM Members
The Deming Management Method, by M. Walton (published by Perigee, Boston; 1986)
The Design of Everyday Things, by D. Nonnan (published by Currency Doubleday, New York; 1988)
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, by S. Krug (published by New Riders, Berkeley; 2000)
Effective Project Management, by R. Wysocki (published by Wiley, New York; 2000)
To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, by Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, Institute of Medicine (published by National Academy Press, Washington, DC; 2000)
Financial Management in Radiology, by S. Sferrella, M. Allen, M. Reitter (published by American Health Radiology Administrators, Sudbury, MA; 2004)
High Availability, by F. Piedad (published by Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ; 2001)
IT Production Services, by H. Kern, R. Schiesser, and M. Muniz (published by Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ; 2004)
IT Systems Management, by R. Schiesser (published by Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ; 2002)
Managerial Breakthrough, by J. Juran (published by McGraw-Hill, New York; 1995)
PACS: A Guide to the Digital Revolution, Second Edition, by K. Dreyer, D. Hirschom, A. Mehta, and J. Thrall (published by Springer, New York; 2005)
PACS and Imaging Informatics: Basic Principles and Applications, by H. K. Huang (published by John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, Hoboken, N; 2004)
PACS Fundamentals, by Herman Oosterwijk (published by OTech, Inc., Aubrey, TX; 2004).
DICOM Basics Third Addition, by Herman Oosterwijk (published by OTech, Inc., Aubrey, TX; 2005)
PERL for System Administration, by D. Blank-Edelman (published by O’Reilly, Cambridge, MA; 2000)
The Practice of System and Network Administration, by T. Limoncelli (published by Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ; 2001)
Quality is Free, by P. Crosby (published by McGraw-Hill, New York; 1979)
The Six Sigma Book for Healthcare: Improving Outcomes and Reducing Errors, by R. Barry (published by Health Administration Press, Chicago, IL; 2002)
UNIX Systems Administrator Handbook, by E. Nemeth (published by Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ; 2000)
Usability Engineering, by J. Nielsen (published by Morgan Kauffman, Stanford, CA; 1993)
Who Moved My Cheese?, by S. Johnson (published by Penguin, New York; 2000)
Windows 2000 Administration, by G. Spalding (published by McGraw-Hill, New York; 2002)
Writing Effective Policies and Procedures, by N. Campbell (published by Amacom, New York; 1998)
Journal Articles can Provide Up-to-Date Information in the Field
You may go to any University Library or search online for related articles using pubmed at http://www.nlm.nih.gov.. If you do not have access to these journals at your location, you may wish to access them for a slight fee through pubmed or the individual journals. Nearly all journals now offer a pay-per-view or a daily fee for downloading full text articles to nonsubscribers. I have included a few to get you started.
“AAPM/RSNA tutorial on equipment selection: PACS equipment overview: general guidelines for purchasing and acceptance testing of PACS equipment,” by E. Samei, J. A. Seibert, K. Andriole, et al., Radiographics, vo1. 23; 2004 (313–334).
“Changes in technologist productivity with implementation of an enterprise-wide PACS,” by B. Reiner, E. Siegel, and M. Scanlon, Journal of Digital lmaging, vol. 15:1; March 2002 (22–26).
“The new RAD administrator,” by G. Wiley, Decisions in Imaging Economics, vol. 18:8; August, 2005 (15–18, 54).
“Defining the role of a PACS technologist,” by A. Cabrera, Journal of Digital Imaging, vol. 15 Suppl 1; June 2002 (120–123).
“Defining the PACS profession: an initial survey of skills, training, and capabilities for PACS administrators,” by P. Nagy, G. Bowers, B. Reiner, and E. Siegel, Journal of Digital Imaging, vol. 18:4; December 2005 (252–259).
“Developing PACS policies and procedures,” 2001, by B. Gaytos, Journal of Digital Imaging, vol. 14: 2; June 2005.
“How many people does it take to operate a picture archiving and communication system?,” by R. Honea, Journal of Digital Imaging, vol. 0114 Suppl 1; June 2001 (40–43).
“How to effectively use consultants,” by W.N. Bridgewater, N. Johnson, and G. Garofolo, Journal of Digital lmaging, vol. 13 Suppl 1; May 2000 (6–9).
“Impact of digital information technologies on radiologic technologist productivity,” Journal of Digital Imaging, Special Issue, vol. 15:3; September 2002.
“Internal IT support crucial to success in filmless department,” by Y. Y. Shieh and G. H. Roberson, Diagnostic Imaging; April 2000 (61–62).
“Management of the picture archiving and communications system archive at Texas Children’s Hospital,” by M. E. Blado, Journal of Digital lmaging, vol. 14 Suppl II; June 2001 (84–88).
“PACS adoption,” by J. Honeyman-Buck, Seminars in Roentgenology, July 2003 (256–269).
“Physician acceptance of new medical information systems: the field of dreams,” by N. W. Treister, Journal of Digital Imaging; May 1998 (20–24).
“Radiologists’ productivity in the interpretation of CT scans: a comparison of PACS with conventional film,” by B. Reiner, E. Siegel, F. Hooper, S. Pomerantz, A. Dahlke, and D. Rallis, American Journal of Roentgenology, vol. 176; 2001 (861–864).
“Reinventing radiology in the digital age. Part I. The all-digital department,” by James H. Thrall, Radiology vol. 236; 2005 (382–385).
“Reinventing radiology in the digital age. Part II. New directions and new stakeholder value,” by James H. Thrall, Radiology vol. 237; 2005 (15–18).
“Reinventing radiology in the digital age. Part III. Facilities, work processes, and job responsibilities,” by James H. Thrall, Radiology vol. 237; 2005 (790–793).
“The goal of medical imaging,” by B. Sanders, Radiology Management, vol. 24: 2, March/April 2002 (12–14).
“The importance of a PACS manager for large-scale PACS installations,” by L. C. Beird, Journal of Digital lmaging, vol. 12 Suppl 1; May 1999; (37).
“User acceptability—a critical success factor for picture archiving and communication system implementation,” by D. Crivianu-Gaita, P. Babyn, D. Gilday, B. O’Brien, and E. Charkot, Journal of Digital lmaging, vol. 13 Suppl 1; May 2000 (13–16).
Finally, Online Resources are Available for Everyone
ADVANCE for imaging administrators, http://www.advanceforioa.com
AHRA “Continuing Education Online,” http://www.ahraonline.org/confed/education/topics.asp
American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), Task Group 18: “Assessment of Display Performance for Medical Imaging Systems,” http://deckard.mc.duke.edu/~samei/tg18
American College of Radiology (ACR) “Standards for Radiologic Practice,” http://www.acr.org
AuntMinnie (Active PACS bulletin board), http://www.auntminnie.com
ClubPACS (An Online Community), http://clubpacs.mcw.edu
Conflict Research Consortium University of Colorado, http://www.conflict.colorado.edu
Contract Pricing Reference Guides, http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/contractpricing/vol5toc.htm
Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy DCM4JBOSS, http://dcm4che.sf.net
Decisions in Imaging Economics, http://www.imagingeconomics.com
Diagnostic Imaging, http://www.dimag.com
DICOM Information and Standard, http://www.dclunie.com/dicom-status/status.html; http://medical.nema.org; http://dcm4che.sf.net
DICOM Validation Toolkit (DVTK), http://www.dvtk.org
Ed Jones Train-the-Trainer, http://www.edjones-train-the-trainer.com
HL 7Browser, http://www.hl7.org/Library/standards.cfm
HL 7 Information and Standard IHE Documents, http://www.ihe.net; http://www.himss.org/ASP/topics_ihe.asp
National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), Medical Imaging Informatics Section, Joint Security and Privacy Initiative “Documents,” http://www.nema.org/prod/med/security
OpenRad, http://www.openrad.com
Radiology Management, http://www.ahraonline.org/Resources/Publications.asp
SANS (System Admin, Audit, Network, Security) Institute “Reading Room” Security, http://www.himss.org/ASP/topics_ihe.asp; http://www.nema.org/prod/med/security; http://web.mit.edu/security
Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA) “Technical Tutorials,” http://www.snia.org/education/tutorials
System Administrators Guild (SAGE), http://sageweb.sage.org
Yahoo PACS Mailing List, http://pacs-admin-suscribe@yahoogroups.com
Yahoo OsiriX Mailing List, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osirix
SIIM Certification Committee
Imaging Informatics Administration Certification Committee
Chair
J. Anthony Seibert, PhD
Professor, Imaging Research Center
UC Davis Medical Center
4860 Y St, Ste 3100
Sacramento, CA 95817
Phone: 916-734-0493
Fax: 916-734-6548
Email: jaseibert@ucdavis.edu
Term: 2008
Member
D. Scott Griffin, BSRT(R)
PACS Administrator, Department of Imaging Services
Southeast Alabama Medical Center
1108 Ross Clark Circle
Dothan, AL 36301
Phone: 334-699-4430
Fax: 334-678-2883
Email: dsgriffin@samc.org
Term: 2008
Member
Shaun A. Hill, RT (R)
PACS Administrator, Department of Radiology
High Point Regional Hospital
601 North Elm Street
High Point, NC 27262
Phone: 336-878-6037
Fax: 336-878-6194
Email: shill@hprhs.com
Term: 2008
Member
Janice Honeyman-Buck, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Radiology
University of Florida
P.O. Box 100374
Gainesville, FL 32610-0374
Phone: 352-265-0291
Fax: 866-634-4821
Email: honeyman@ufl.edu
Term: 2008
Member
Steven C. Horii, MD
Professor, Department of Radiology
University of Penn Health System
3400 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: 215-349-5183
Fax: 215-349-5627
Email: Steve.Horii@uphs.upenn.edu
Term: 2008
Member
Richard L. Morin, PhD
Professor, Department of Diagnostic Radiology
Mayo Clinic-Jacksonville
4500 San Pablo Road
Jacksonville, FL 32224
Phone: 904-953-8752
Fax: 904-953-2894
Email: morin.richard@mayo.edu
Term: 2008
Member
Paul G. Nagy, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology
University of Maryland School of Medicine
22 South Greene Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: 410-328-6301
Fax: 410-328-0641
Email: pnagy@umm.edu
Term: 2008
Member
Keith L. Skaer
Imaging Manager, Clinical Engineering
BJC Health System
3165 McKelvey Road, Ste 110
St Louis, MO 63044
Phone: 314-996-8920
Fax: 314-996-8928
Email: kls7124@bjc.org
Term: 2008
Member
Charles W. Socia, RT (R)(CT)(QM)
VP of Operations
Arkansas Medical Imaging
9601 Lile Drive, Ste 1100
Little Rock, AR 72205
Phone: 501-223-3392
Fax: 501-223-4970
Email: csocia@arkansasmedicalimaging.com
Term: 2008
Member
David Wild
Director of Systems Integration, Radiology Department
Albert Einstein Healthcare Network
11 Almond Court
Lafayette Hill, PA 19444-2500
Phone: 215-456-7117
Fax: 215-456-6227
Email: wildd@einstein.edu
Term: 2008
Member
Byrn Williamson, Jr., MD
612 9th Avenue SW
Rochester, MN 55902
Phone: 507-288-1339 (H)
Fax: 507-284-8996
Email: williamson.byrn@mayo.edu
Term: 2008