Worklist — Radiology Task Queue

What Is a Worklist?

A worklist in the context of medical imaging is an ordered list of scheduled procedures or pending tasks that guides technologists and radiologists through their daily work. It is generated by the RIS and delivered to imaging equipment or reading stations via the DICOM Modality Worklist (MWL) service, ensuring that patient and order information is pre-populated on the modality before the exam begins.

For radiologists, a reading worklist organizes studies that are ready for interpretation, prioritized by urgency, modality type, referring physician, or other configurable criteria. This queue-based approach ensures that critical studies are read first and nothing falls through the cracks.

Why It Matters in Healthcare

Without a digital worklist, imaging departments rely on paper requisitions or verbal communication to coordinate exams—a process prone to errors and inefficiency:

• Data accuracy: When a technologist manually types patient information on the scanner console, the risk of demographic mismatches and mislabeled images is significant. A DICOM worklist auto-populates these fields directly from the RIS, eliminating keystroke errors.
• Workflow visibility: Department managers can see at a glance how many studies are scheduled, in progress, or awaiting interpretation, enabling real-time workload balancing.
• Turnaround time: Priority-based reading worklists ensure that emergency and stat studies are interpreted first, improving time-to-report for critical findings.
• Accountability: Each study on the worklist has a clear status trail—ordered, acquired, reported, verified—providing full traceability for quality assurance and compliance.
• Throughput optimization: By analyzing worklist data, facilities can identify bottlenecks, adjust staffing, and optimize scanner utilization.

How Davix Relates to Worklists

The Davix PACS/RIS includes a fully integrated worklist management module that connects scheduling with acquisition and reporting:

• DICOM Modality Worklist (MWL): Scheduled procedures are pushed automatically to imaging equipment, ensuring accurate patient and order data on every study.
• MPPS integration: As technologists complete exams, the modality sends performed procedure step messages back to the RIS, updating the worklist in real time.
• Reading worklist: Radiologists—whether on-site or working remotely via teleradiology—see a prioritized, filterable queue of studies ready for interpretation.
• Customizable rules: Worklist routing can be configured by modality type, body part, urgency, referring physician, or subspecialty to match your department's workflow.
• Analytics: Worklist throughput data feeds into clinical dashboards for performance monitoring and capacity planning.

By automating worklist management, Davix helps radiology departments reduce errors, accelerate turnaround, and maintain full visibility over every study from order to final report.