Radiology in China

From Parking to Research

The First Affiliated Hospital to Zhengzhou University will soon remodel its centerpiece. What is now the hospital’s parking lot is about to become a multidisciplinary research center. The new building will have about 140,000 square meters. Radiology research will be part of it. The radiology department already only purchases world-class equipment, a policy that already has effects on the hospital’s international visibility. “We do a lot of research with these new techniques, which helps our radiologists to get their papers published at RSNA or ECR, “ says CT department head Jianbo Gao. For the last couple of years, an average of around ten radiology employees has attended RSNA with a lecture or a poster. The hospital strongly encourages these special research accomplishments. Publications in international journals count as well: A researcher gets 10,000 Renminbi for every Impact Factor; if the paper is above 5, the amount is doubled. Despite the bright future of research in Zhengzhou, the picture also shows a darker side of the city: Zhengzhou has some of the worst air quality in China.