Vendor Neutral Archiving: Does it Impact Costs and Outcomes?.

Get Connected With Vendor Neutral Archiving and See Results

The case study of a new medical imaging technology brought into a Canadian hospital helps to give some insights into the question about the necessity of vendor neutral archiving in the medical community today. There has been a lot of talk about vendor neutral archiving in recent years, and some confusion. In the end, if you’re connected to a vendor that offers true vendor neutral archiving technology, you’re going to see benefits.

Vendor neutral archiving, or VNA, does just what it sounds like it will do – it is a non-proprietary way of managing images, which means the roadblocks so many providers face today with their expensive PACS can be worked around with the right VNA solution.

London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario experienced growing storage requirements as well as changes in the way the PACS workflow was going. Costs were expected to skyrocket, so they took on a VNA implementation in 2008. Here’s a brief list of what they found once they were up and running:

• VNA changed the architecture and economics of PACS
• Proprietary storage and archiving components were separated
• Providers saw more opportunities to share information across facilities
• They created longitudinal imaging records for patients
• Remote reading of studies becomes a reality
• Cost of long-term image archiving was optimized
• Business continuity and disaster recovery was improved

What the Centre and other providers know already is that the PACS they’ve had for 15-plus years allowed for the centralized storage of images from multiple modalities. These PACS could manage proprietary forms of DICOM imaging when attached to a proprietary storage and dedicated workstation. However, as the technology surrounding PACS advanced, more was expected in terms of functionality, which meant providers began to demand standard formats for stored images to assist them in migrating data and archiving at a lower cost. This, in part, led to the development of VNA technology.

The technology surrounding medical imaging has improved vastly, giving patients and healthcare professionals a better view of what’s going on inside the body and unlocking answers related to treatment. With patients today seeking out treatment from multiple providers, the need for sharing these images has grown exponentially. However, when saddled with antiquated PACS, providers often have issues communicating from one department to the next, let alone from one facility to another.

What London Health Sciences Centre and professionals at other facilities have learned since the advent of VNA is that they don’t have to replace their entire system. Rather, the right VNA solution will integrate current systems and offer an offsite solution that brings with it many efficiencies that improve the quality of care they’re able to provide.

OffSite Image Management, Inc., is a company that has been at the forefront of offering true VNA solutions that give clients full access to their images, which are stored offsite, disaster recovery solutions and the ability to share images across departments, facilities and state lines. Contact us today and we’ll get you started on a cloud-based image management solution that will save you money and improve your workflow.