Quality improvement of online-resources in radiology

Purpose: Categorization. and evaluation of online teaching files in radiology by representative members of the target group to make the specific search for adequate programs more effective. Materials and Methods: A representative team of board qualified radiologists, residents and medical students performed a basic search for radiology teaching files on the Internet using search machines, international mailing lists and link lists to collections of national and international radiological societies and departments. The programs were categorized by language, modality, target group and special features, such as qualification for CME-accreditation. For final evaluation and ranking of the detected files, a questionnaire was developed to assess completeness, image quality, page loading time, layout, orientation, inter-activity,annotation and maintenance. The results were stored in an Access database on a web server. A query form in HTML format, including the parameters described above, was made accessible to the online user. Results: A search machine for radiological teaching files (RadList/Entity-link List) was made available online (http://www.tnt-radiology.de/radlist and http://www. tnt-radiology.de/entitylinklist). A submitted request calls a cgi script that searches the database for the appropriate sites according to the individual search parameters selected by the user. The list of matching URLs is returned to the user as HTML page. Evaluating the single sites by applying the criteria listed above contributed to the quality assurance of the radiological teaching resources on the Internet. Conclusion: Adapting a new Internet interface to the particular needs of the user allows a more effective access to specific radiological teaching files online. RadList/Entity-link List (http://www.tnt-radiology.de/ radlist and http://www.tnt-radiology.de/entitylinklist) is conducive to quality improvement and benefits users as well as authors of radiological teaching files on the Internet.