In The Netherlands a national PACS development programme has been started, supported by the Dutch Society of Radiology and funded by the Dutch Department of Health because of the national character of the project. Three main partners are cooperating in this development: the Utrecht University Hospital (AZU), BAZIS and Philips International (Product Division Medical Systems), with the Delft University of Technology as the main BAZIS subcontractor. The non-profit foundation BAZIS, developing and supporting the ZIS Hospital Information System (in use in some 30 Dutch hospitals, over 15,000 acute beds), initiated its current IMAGe Information System (IMAGIS) projects in 1984. The activities were later integrated into the Dutch PACS project started in 1986. The final goal of the project is to achieve a PACS which is fully integrated with already existing hospital information systems (HIS). The development and operation of a HIS-PACS include many aspects of technical and clinical. The current efforts of BAZIS are concentrated on three main issues: diagnostic image quality evaluation (e.g. effects of data compression); modelling, software simulation and technology assessment of a prototype PACS (both general and detailed aspects); and coupling and integration of PACS and HIS (e.g. the BAZIS ZIS). Philips, Hamburg, is supplying equipment, particularly prototype components. A systematic clinical evaluation will take place at the Utrecht University Hospital.2+ We outline the background of the intermediate results as demonstrated during the 6th EuroPACS Conference:the psychophysical software package for Feature Evaluation And System Inspection By Logged Experiments (FEASIBLE); the modelling and simulation software package for Medical Image Representation, Archiving and Communication, Learned by Extensive Simulation (MIRACLES); and first results of the coupling experiments.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)