Effectiveness of Radiographic Transmission with Cloud Storage for Screening Pneumonia in COVID-19 Patients in Field Hospitals, Phitsanulok Province

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the efficiency of the use of networking communication technology (Google cloud platform) to facilitate mobile X-ray work for COVID19 patients of the field hospital, Mueang District, Phitsanulok Province. It was conducted as a quantitative study among healthcare professionals using a chest radiographic imaging system for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in 30 patients receiving services at the field hospital. The patients were selected by purposive sampling. Technical evaluation was performed by examining the wireless LAN service in the area and overall system performance; and the quality assessment was conducted by evaluating users’ satisfaction, delivery time of radiographic images, photo quality, the convenience of equipment utilization, and security of the original system and the networking system (Google cloud platform). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. It was found that the inspection of service areas of all access points revealed sufficient radiographic transmission speed. The nwtworking communication had better radiographic delivery time (p<0.05); highest level of satisfaction (mean=4.56); and better photo quality (p<0.05) leading to a high satisfaction level. As well, the networking communication was highly staisfied on the the ease of using the equipment (p<0.05). For the satisfaction on security aspect of data access it was found that there was no statistically significant differene between the 2 system (p>0.05). In summary, networking communication technology (Cloud storage platform) could be used to transmit chest X-ray images in mobile X-ray work in COVID-19 patients of field hospitals with reduced transmission time for radiographic images, the convenience to use; and the image quality, although the data security was not different.