The signature gate
No report leaves the clinical service without a licensed radiologist’s signature. The rule is enforced in the platform’s code, not in a policy document.
Approach
Reading as infrastructure
One pathway carries a film from a clinic’s phone to a signed report — built from parts Afghan clinics already have, spending the scarce resource, a radiologist’s attention, only where it is needed.
- Written in Dari or Pashto the clinic’s language, set right to left
- Findings and impression what the radiologist saw, and what it means
- Signed by name and licence stamped at signature; never re-derived
- The Mohr-e Asil code resolves at partaw.com/verify — a forgery fails the check
The pathway
Four decisions the pathway makes
- A film, not a DICOM feed
- Most Afghan clinics have no PACS and never will. The pathway starts from what they do have: a film on a lightbox and a phone. The platform accepts a WhatsApp photograph of the film and normalizes it — orientation, crop, exposure — into something readable.
- De-identified, then queued by urgency
- Identifying details are minimized at intake and the study is ordered by urgency, so a radiologist’s scarce attention lands on the sickest patient first, not the most recent upload.
- A human read, under a name and a license
- A licensed radiologist reads the study in a purpose-built cockpit and signs the report. The signature is not a flourish: the reader’s name and license number are stamped onto the report, and nothing is delivered without them.
- Delivered where the clinic already is
- The signed report returns as a Dari or Pashto PDF in the same WhatsApp thread. Every report carries a verification code any recipient can check — so a paper printout in a district clinic can still be trusted.
Software
Assistive by design
On the general pathway, software triages the queue and pre-drafts reports for the radiologist to correct. It does not read, it does not clear, and it does not sign. There is no WHO-recommended algorithm that rules out a wrist fracture or a pneumonia — those reads are human work.
The one place the evidence supports a larger role for software is tuberculosis screening, where the WHO has conditionally recommended computer-aided detection for triage in people aged 15 and over. That architecture — and its limits — is laid out in full on the TB screening program page.
Governance, in the code
Verifiable reports
Every delivered report resolves at a public verification page — the Mohr-e Asil seal. A forged or altered report fails the check.
An append-only record
Every step of every study is written to an audit log that cannot be edited or deleted — the raw material of both accountability and research.