Meaningful use and value-based care have pushed healthcare IT professionals to rethink their approach to infrastructure, and due to various aspects of the workflow in radiology departments today, vendor neutral archives (VNAs) have been a go-to solution.
The major advantage of adopting a true VNA solution is that regardless of where an image comes from, you can view it. A VNA solution provides a time-saving and error-free utilization, but it also comes at a lower cost to facilities that use it because there is very little training involved in.
Finding Your VNA Solution
Not all VNA solutions are created equal – vendors have different approaches to this technology. Your business model might not be a good match for many VNAs being offered, which is why you need to assess your business needs and how scalable you need to be for the future.
In preparation for getting the VNA that will work for you, consider the following:
- Allow For
Evolution
Your VNA should be able to adapt to the evolution of unstructured healthcare data. It should be able to sort through it so you can remain fast and flexible. - Cloud-Friendly
Many cloud-based solutions can make you more flexible because they integrate more easily with other processes that keep you lean and agile. - Shared
Access
Your VNA should include tools that give data access to departments outside of radiology. - EHR
Integration
Your VNA should be useful, not only as a way to view images, but to integrate with other technologies that assist you in managing your electronic health records.
VNA Cloud Advantages
You might have a high-functioning PACS (picture archiving communications system), but no matter how efficient it is, there are things it can’t do without VNA. For example, how good is your PACS when it comes to sharing images with other departments?
If it’s seamless image storing and archiving that you want, regardless of what type of PACS you have, VNA will help you fill your wants and needs.
At OffSite Image Management, our VNA services give you a cloud-based solution for getting the flexibility, scalability and access you have been missing. Our approach is to give our clients non-proprietary access to all objects understood by the community at large, i.e., DICOM part 102. Our solutions support the most inclusive DICOM query/retrieve specification as a service provider for the information stored in the archive at all information levels. To make sure our customers are always using the latest and most advanced solution, we provide ADT updates to the image files stored in the archive. Finally, OffSite provides the complete suite of DICOM SOP classes. Contact us and find out more about our approach to assisting our customers.