A method of distributing an image study toa chosen image reader is disclosed having steps ofreceiving an image study Ir urn an image producer at a thirdparty communication module (204), sending a receivenotification message to a messaging layer (214), sending astudy available notification message from the messaginglayer to a workload distribution engine (114) wherein theavailable notification message includes extracted imagestudy information pulled from study headers of the imagestudy, identifying image study rules from the extractedimage study information, applying an image studycomplexity to the image study based on the image studyrules(422), calculating image reader complexities (432)for a plurality of image readers subscribed to receiveimage studies from the image producer, each of the imagereader complexities calculated using the image studycomplexity and an Image reader profile assigned to each of theplurality of accredited image readers, selecting the chosenimage reader from the plurality of image readers based onthe image reader complexities, assigning the image studyto the chosen image reader(440), and displaying the imagestudy on a user interface to the chosen image reader.
