Professionals in imaging and radiology departments have established that vendor neutral archive (VNA) technology allows them to gain centralized control over how their images and other data are managed. Rather than seeking out new PACS, they’re able to enhance their current infrastructure with VNA. If you have yet to adopt VNA, consider the many benefits you can realize once you make the leap and implement it.
Two of the standards most often followed in imaging are DICOM and HL7 standards, which VNA follows, and that’s key because the data exchange between different PACS and electronic medical record solutions and other technologies is vital. It really all comes down to proper workflow, and that’s where VNA has been a hero.
Saving on Storage Costs
Organizations that have adopted VNA, can tell you of the savings they have experienced with this type of data storage. The way this works is that with image sizes growing larger and larger, you can use VNA to compress images, thereby reducing the storage costs.
Controlling Data
In the early days of cloud-based technology, there was a widespread fear of losing control of data. Accompanying that was the apprehension of the data residing in an unsecured environment. Those fears have been debunked, and now healthcare providers have realized that they have full control of their data when they utilize VNA.
There are also rules you set that will determine your level of control. For example, you can control the way your data is routed, how it is backed up and how it is cleaned. When you adopt VNA, don’t be surprised if your data migration process goes faster and without worry about costs building up.
Choosing the Right Vendor
If you’ve done research on VNA, you’ve likely come across the mention of “true VNA”. This is a clarification made by vendors who offer what they consider to be top tier solutions that other vendors don’t provide.
At OffSite Image Management, we have made that distinction because we have found that other vendors fail to provide some of the services that should fall under the description of VNA. For example, our VNA supports DICOM and non-DICOM content. We also give our clients the ability to aggregate query results from many disparate PACS and support API-level integration.
More perks with our true VNA services include on-premise, hybrid and cloud storage architecture, a hardware independent platform and automatic RIS updates. Our VNA is also browser agnostic, which means you get across-the-board improved viewing advantages.
For more information about our services, contact us and we’ll discuss our VNA and other solutions that will improve your workflow.
