News Story

Informatics Report: Four Considerations in Replacing Your PACS
FDA Approved: Barco?s Clinical Applications for Cardiac Analysis Cleared
Running the Numbers
Product Showcase: Totoku Offers Another Monitor Option for Digital Mammography
Diskriter and M*Modal Team Up to Provide Speech Understanding Solution
Product Showcase: New PACS Provides Support of Legacy Ultrasound Systems

Informatics Report: Four Considerations in Replacing Your PACS

By Michael Mack

As the PACS market matures, a growing number of health care facilities are beginning to consider replacing their PACS. Keep in mind the following considerations if your site plans to replace its PACS.

1) Evaluate the success of your current system. How much film are you still printing? Are you paperless? What are the functional deficiencies of your current system? I have seen several sites where deployment of the technology, weak rollout, and incomplete distribution hardware can impact the amount of film still being printed—in other words, facilities that are still printing most cases to film. No one knows the strengths and weaknesses of your system like you do, so do your homework. Know what other sites similar to yours have accomplished, and measure yourself against them. Perform an honest, knowledgeable self-assessment. The outcome of this evaluation will lay the groundwork for what should be the key objectives in purchasing your new PACS. In many cases, things might have changed, such as involvement of a different radiology group, new strategic business alliances in IT, or administrative priorities.

2) Review the process and time line from your original project. If you are looking at a replacement PACS because several key objectives were not realized, then you selected the wrong vendor and/or purchased a product that was not accurately designed to meet your facility’s needs. If this is your situation, do not follow the same process. The same failed process will lead to the same failed result. In most cases, these failed results have typically led to the departure of the individuals who either made the decision or forced the decision previously. Be prudent to avoid pitfalls from before. Do not let history repeat itself, and document the process.

3) Prepare a plan to begin the process. So many sites believe that staff members can just begin moving forward with this additional work—which will be substantial, if done correctly—on top of what they already are doing today. Be realistic, as this is not a 10-hour project. Do you plan to evaluate your current vendor’s latest platform and then decide? Optimally, you should look at the current market offerings and evaluate what is available from the incumbent vendor versus the market. The time and effort spent in this endeavor will be important when you present your processes, findings, and financial statement to your hospital board or finance committee. My experience has shown that the committee wants to be presented with complete information that will enable an informed decision to be made.

4) Create your PACS committee, and then follow your process and the timeline defined in number 3. Perform due diligence. Make sure your plan includes what you will be doing with all your existing hardware—can or will it be reutilized? And, most importantly, know how you plan to manage your existing image archive, especially if you are changing vendors.

Every facility is facing different challenges, and you must be able to lead, manage, or support what is customized to achieve your goals. Remember, measure twice, cut once. Be realistic about what needs to be done, what can be done, and how it can be done. This is a very high-profile activity and, as you are aware, without the proper preparation, you are taking on significant risk.

Michael Mack is VP of business development at the Thomas Group Ltd (Anaheim, Calif). With more than 20 years of experience in the medical-imaging industry, Mack now specializes in PACS planning and implementation.

Running the Numbers

83 companies are listed as PACS vendors and consultants in the 2006 Medical Imaging Buyer?s Guide. The Buyer?s Guide lists contact information for more than 700 companies in the medical-imaging space, and it groups companies into product categories. The 2007 edition, coming in October, is in production now. To have your company listed, e-mail Editor Andi Lucas: .

Diskriter and M*Modal Team Up to Provide Speech Understanding Solution

AnyModal CDS, the results of Diskriter?s partnership with M*Modal, aims to improve efficiency in the medical dictation and transcription process.

Diskriter (Pittsburgh), a provider of medical transcription and health information management services, has joined with M*Modal (Pittsburgh), a provider of conversational documentation services, to integrate M*Modal’s proprietary speech understanding technology into Diskriter’s medical transcription platform.

“Our objective is to provide health care organizations with the best available speech-recognition?based technology that is easily integrated into our clients’ workflow, that is transparent to the speaker, and that transforms the clinical documentation process,” said Michael Finke, chairman, CEO, and founder of M*Modal. “The result is AnyModal CDS, which, without requiring any change to the physician’s workflow or dictation routine, makes the process of medical transcription significantly more efficient. It also delivers documents that capture the narrative, along with the clinical facts contained therein, in structured and encoded form.”