DICOM Storage Vendors are Working Offsite
In a perfect world, healthcare professionals working with medical images would be able to view MRIs, CT scans, standard digital photographs from dermatology, electrocardiograms, PDFs and any other visual element that assists them in providing excellent patient care. However, thanks to a number of proprietary technologies and image silos, this isn’t possible. When it comes to DICOM storage and viewing a full suite of DICOM SOP classes, what can you do to improve your workflow?
The industry as a whole has become more collaborative due in part to patient preferences regarding the number of professionals they seek out to manage their health. However, technology is having a hard time keeping up, and antiquated PACS are tasked with jobs that they weren’t originally designed to do. It has come time to break down existing barriers to better healthcare.
PACS are mainly built to work on a DICOM-based format, but the up and coming enterprise imaging resources are looking to go beyond that and provide more image access outside of the DICOM field. Some believe that creating a universal viewer is impossible, especially considering that 3D imaging and a standard PDF are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to image formats. However, could offsite imaging, archived using vendor neutral archiving (VNA) technology, be a huge step in that direction?
Yuma Regional Medical Center is a facility using VNA to its advantage. In an effort to support images from most or all of its departments, the hospital is utilizing VNA in a multi-year process to expand its medical imaging accessibility, currently on two separate viewers to handle different formats.
Healthcare professionals want to be able to view images on their preferred devices, and sometimes, that includes devices outside of their normal workstation. It could be in the ER, or the operating room, or in the office while consulting a patient. It could even be outside the clinical environment. To gain access to this type of availability, they’re looking to offsite archiving resources.
DICOM storage processes don’t have to be based in the basement of the hospital or clinic on servers prone to constant maintenance and frequent downtime. A safer, more reliable prospect is handing off archiving capabilities to an offsite management group that can store the images at multiple datacenters.
Of course, the added advantage to partnering with a vendor that uses VNA to archive images is that the availability factor improves substantially. The accessibility that once escaped the entire hospital group is now a reality with availability to something as small as a smart phone.
OffSite Image Management, Inc. is spearheading the movement to say goodbye to DICOM storage solutions and bringing in the age of near 100 percent uptime, availability and security all through a single vendor. Our solutions are a 360-degree answer to diagnostic imaging needs. One team can handle all your image management needs, which allows you to cut costs and cut the cord that ties you to proprietary vendors who want to charge you for every data migration. Contact us today and let’s talk about how we can improve your workflow.