How VNA is Changing the Landscape of Healthcare
When it comes to technology, especially in the healthcare industry, things change fast. We see it
today in the way we approach our PACS. More and more, vendor neutral archiving (VNA) is getting attention far and beyond PACS.
VNA has caused such a stir that the market is projected to grow to $210 million in just a year’s time. The reason more providers are going this route is that they are experiencing too much difficulty sharing their images through the traditional PACS. While there is still a market for PACS, the largest growth is in the VNA market.
Not only has technology changed, the culture of healthcare has as well. For instance, patients seek help from multiple sources, more today than ever, which is why there is more of a need for solutions that allow institutions to easily share their images. Workflows are becoming more complicated, especially with outdated technology, including legacy PACS.
Not all VNA is alike. In fact, there are some discrepancies on the actual definition of it, variances from one provider to another. True VNA will work with DICOM and non-DICOM files. True VNA also supports inclusive DICOM query/retrieve specifications, and it will handle ADT updates to the image files stored in the archive. If you’re considering a VNA solution that doesn’t offer these capabilities, you’re looking at the wrong solution.
The best solutions are those that are deployed in a highly available configuration, which means the file management will be available to more than just radiology, or radiology and one other department. For enterprise-wide management capabilities, the solution must be configured in a way that gives access to all, even those in other facilities.
Also, your VNA should integrate with your electronic medical record (EMR) system. In fact, your VNA should be an image repository for your EMR. All data will be in sync, making management of patient information much easier. This also makes patient access to their records more manageable, which is important in this increasingly patient-centric atmosphere.
VNA allows you to step away from silos, which have a history of causing difficulties. For example, it’s not uncommon for providers with multiple sites to have incomplete records on their patients due to information in one silo not transferring to another. Often, this means that a patient’s medical record will include HL7 data, but not their images. VNA deployed across the entire system will remedy that problem.
At OffSite Image Management, Inc., we’ve developed VNA technology that is “true” VNA. We are helping hospitals face major challenges in the way they adopt imaging data center solutions for their multisite environments. Many hospitals are bogged down by their PACS, which offer a central archive, and they feel burdened when it becomes time to replace the PACS with that of another vendor. By choosing our VNA solutions, you don’t have to hassle with burdens.