Impact of the filmless hospital

When an entire hospital becomes completely filmless, this has a number of implications for the radiology department and for the hospital as a whole. These implications include: economic aspects and staff changes, changes in working practices, and the quality of the system (its hardware and software), which must be sufficiently high for the department and the hospital to be able to operate in a filmless mode and maintain a satisfactory clinical service. More far reaching implications of a filmless hospital which will ultimately have an important impact include medical education using the system, and the implementation of teleradiology. The paper discusses these implications