Vendor neutral archiving (VNA) is more than just a trend – it is bringing great value to healthcare facilities across the nation. However, this wasn’t always the case.
When hospital and radiology administrators began bringing picture archiving and communication systems into their facilities, they were coming in as complete solutions, meaning all the hardware had to be proprietary to work on the system. The notion of adopting a VNA system seemed somewhat radical at that time.
While all-inclusive methods seemed convenient up front, facilities began to notice their limitations. As 
the systems and organizations matured, the data they needed to gain access to was essentially held hostage by the all-inclusive system. Administrators began to realize they needed to separate their PACS from the archive, and VNA was the most logical choice, but why?
First off, flexibility is important to any growing organization or an organization that needs to communicate medical data from one department to another. When radiology offices want to add new imaging systems or consolidate systems, VNA has the flexibility to achieve this.
Access is also one of the main reasons healthcare providers are going with VNA systems. Access to medical images needs to be streamlined to be efficient. Even when PACS go down, facilities that have their data tied to a VNA, many of which are cloud-based, still have access to their medical images and data.
Fully operational VNAs have the kind of support that handles DICOM and non-DICOM content. This content could include all types of files in their native formats, be it movie, waveform, audio or images. Robust workflow within a robust VNA also enables standards-based information management.
The growth of the VNA within the medical community forced PACS companies to begin partnering with VNA companies. The level of quality differs from partnership to partnership, but the best in the industry are engineering highly robust management capabilities that provide excellent workflow options.
Even enterprise content management firms are beginning to see the light and are considering VNA solutions for themselves. In the end, offering the best patient care is what everyone working within the healthcare industry wants to achieve and VNA is proving to be an effective solution for the industry as well as others.
A report in IHS titled Medical Enterprise Data Storage – World – 2013 predicts continued booming growth in VNA adoption. The growth, of course, is related to more PACS migration to VNA. According to the report, VNA has been the biggest trend in the healthcare IT market for more than a year. VNA is predicted to be at the forefront of image management for at least the next decade.
OffSite Image Management, Inc., offers vendor neutral archiving services that give healthcare facilities excellent flexibility. Hospitals frequently change PACS vendors and bring new hospitals into their network. If they’ve got a true VNA on their side, these transitions are much less complex, and OffSite has success in this field, giving healthcare providers 24/7 access to data that is stored in multiple Level IV data centers.