The main result obtained is, of course, the creation of a digital image
browser adapted to both the examination process and available
infrastructure. During the first three years, the candidates have been
able to work on individual stations, thus definitely replacing the
cumbersome old-fashioned backlit film viewing in a corridor. The tool
was not perfect and still isn't but has provided the main enhancements
hoped from the transition, both for examinators and examinees.
While this was the explicit goal of the tool, the trial and error as
well as the user-oriented development of the authoring tool has given
both the radiological experts and the software developers great
experience on the general organisation and possibilities of
Web-compatible tools. The development of the quiz online answering
system, thought not used for real-life answering during the FMH
examinations, has enabled new sights for group-authoring and result
management and tracking of radiological quizzes.
The integration of other open source projects has also offered us a
concrete way to show our involvment in the creation of
worldwide-academic Internet-based tools for radiology. The quiz project
has helped us share the effort towards the development of online
radiology tools that can be less linked to economical or political
variables, on which we can experiment and do research. In that way, the
open source code generated for the quiz plug-in is one extra brick
towards the development of our own tools to enhance professional work,
and/or of our better understanding of the know-how in order to know
what we need.
Asides, the IntRad website has become one of the first Internet
accessible internet examples of academic open source radiological tool
development, and participates in the motivation of other academic
groups worldwide to use and enhance open source applications as a sound
alternative to software design: based on the goal of benefitting from
the functionalities of the tool developed before any other. You can
contact the team in order to have access to the software package or
more information about the project's continuity.
This site, including online applications, is built using our co-developed open source CMS named BolinOS, you can contact us for more info about this shared project.