Health Imaging & IT - February 2008 - (Page 22)

SPeCIAl SeCTIOn HeAlTH IT By Lisa Fratt Image Management Online image management solutions offer a novel paradigm in the crowded PACS market. Under some online arrangements, the vendor assumes the bulk of the IT and storage burden, which can make for a smoother PACS implementation and upgrade process. The model works well in many types of settings including community hospitals and multi-site imaging enterprises. It can serve as a comprehensive or departmental solution depending on the needs of the site. In others, the online approach reduces the cost and burden of client server architecture to provide universal access to images across and beyond the enterprise. This month, Health Imaging & IT visits a few sites that have discovered the benefits of tapping into online image management. Propelled out of the dark ages “Yavapai Medical Center [in Prescott, Ariz.] resided in the dark ages at the turn of [the 21st] century,” admits RIS/PACS Administrator John Munday. Labor-intensive manual image management processes ruled at the small facility. Images were pushed to a teleradiology system, and radiologists dialed in to access images. A failure of the teleradiology system proved to be a blessing in disguise. Radiology staff happened to meet InSite One Inc. at an Arizona Hospital Association meeting. The company shared its ASP model with Yavapai leadership. Essentially, InSite One proposed to store digital studies, convert analog images to a digital format and install black boxes to output digital studies on each older system that did not transmit digital data. The company also enabled radiology information system (RIS) functionality and worklist reading by storing all studies. Yavapai Medical Center realized an immediate cost savings with the approach. “When we started storing digital images, the medical center did not have a place to store the data or a budget to purchase critical IT infrastructure,” says Munday. InSite One offered a budget-friendly option by providing the primary onsite archive and two redundant offsite archives in Connecticut and Phoenix. The dual redundant archives serve as the disaster recovery mechanism for the medical center. The next big bang coincided with the PACS deployment in 2005. “Converting to PACS is usually a painful process with radiology working in two worlds during the transition: soft-copy current files and hard-copy historical images. Because we had more than two years of historical digital files, we were able to go filmless overnight,” says Munday. 22 Health Imaging & IT | February 2008 HealthImaging.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Health Imaging & IT - February 2008

Health Imaging & IT - February 2008 Contents On the Web The Enterprise News Update Cover Story: Enterprise Image Management Makes the Grade Modality Update Special Section: Health IT: Image Management Special Section: Health IT: PCs on the Move Convention Spotlight Technology Outlook Technology Update Reader's Resource Stat Sheet

Health Imaging & IT - February 2008

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