Medical Imaging Blog

PACS

PACS Market Swings Toward Upgrades and Replacements

Back in May, we noted that the PACS market was growing steadily and that a significant portion would probably be in replacements and upgrades.

It turns out that we were right.

Here are the pertinent numbers from market research conducted by IMV’s Medical Information Division:

87 percent. That’s the percentage of expenditures involving PACS that’s going toward upgrading existing PACS systems.
85 percent. That’s the percentage of full-system PACS purchases that were replacement systems (meaning that just 15 percent were from first-time PACS buyers).

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Boldly Going Where No Medical Imaging Has Gone Before

$100,000 doesn’t amount to much in the world of medical imaging. But in developing countries, it makes medical imaging available to thousands of people – and that’s just the first benefit.

Imaging the World (ITW), a US based non-profit that develops medical training and technologies to bring medical imaging to remote areas around the world, recently received a $100,000 grant from Grand Challenges Explorations, which funds scientists and researchers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Grand Challenges Explorations is one of many global health initiatives funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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CVIS and PACS Ending Information Systems Silos

A recent article from Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology confirms what we at McKesson have known for a long time: that the goal of cardiovascular information systems (CVIS), also sometimes referred to as cardiology PACS, is to replace disparate software systems with a single solution, enabling medical imaging professionals to be much more efficient while improving care.

In the past, the cardiology department would have disparate systems for cath, echo, ECG management, etc. Cardiologists and other medical imaging professionals had to log into each system separately, and in many cases, information and images that were available in one location (like a hospital) were not available at another (like a clinic). To use technical language, the systems were “siloed.”

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Effective Teleradiology

In a previous post, Teleradiology: A New Frontier in Medical Imaging, we wrote about the “new” phenomenon of teleradiology and how it’s changed medical imaging for the better. In this post, we want to lay out the basics of an effective teleradiology system.

Hardware and Software

Effective teleradiology demands:

A web-based 3D PACS (to allow medical imaging professionals to read all kinds of images)
An RIS, preferably with speech-recognition technology
Integration with the healthcare organization’s other software
Secure – that is, includes strong security features – storage and transmission of images and patient information

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Teleradiology: A New Frontier in Medical Imaging

When you think about it, the supposedly new discipline of “teleradiology” isn’t all that new. Radiologists and other medical imaging professionals have been consulting over the phone for years.

What’s new, of course, is technology that allows organizations to set up sophisticated medical imaging systems that include the ability to send and receive images and commentary over vast distances in virtually no time at all. Consider: just 20 years ago, if a medical imaging professional wanted to consult with another one 50 miles away, he or she would have to make a copy of the image, have it sent securely by mail or courier, wait for it to arrive, and then schedule a time to discuss the image – all while hoping that nothing disrupted any of these steps. If nothing did, there was still the hassle of talking about an image without having an easy common reference.

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PACS in an Age of Change – Virtual Conference

It’s free and it’s wherever you are. All you need is a good internet connection and questions about the rapidly changing PACS world.

This year’s PACS Spring Virtual Conference is designed especially for those who can’t attend the June conference of the Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) in Washington, DC. It even includes a roundtable discussion co-sponsored by SIIM!

The details:

PACS in an Age of Change is on Tuesday May 17, 2011, starting at 10:00 am Eastern Time.

Presentations:

Meaningful Use and Radiology: What Next? Adeel Siddiqui, MBBS, Cooper University Hospital

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PACS Growth: Not “If,” but “How Much?”

McKesson and other manufacturers of picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) have a lot to look forward to. Consider the following:

According to a study by healthcare research firm Kalorama Information, the U.S. PACS market could hit $1.46 billion this year.
The same report forecasts double-digit growth for the PACS market through 2015, which means that in three years, hospitals and other healthcare institutions could be spending upward of $2 billion each year to add, replace, or upgrade a PACS.

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McKesson PACS Success in Nebraska

“We knew we needed a stable system out of the gate.” So says Chuck Lakso as he explains why his department chose McKesson PACS to replace its outdated image storage system.

Lakso is Radiology Director at the Nebraska Medical Center, the University of Nebraska’s medical hospital which performs more than 250,000 imaging procedures each year. Before implementing McKesson’s PACS solution, “The tools available to the radiologists weren’t adequate for everything we needed to accomplish,” says radiology chair Craig Walker. Images could not be downloaded or uploaded quickly, only certain computers could be used to view images, and paper orders were necessary to ensure that image interpretation wasn’t being duplicated.

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RSNAVideo: We’re More than a PACS and EHR Provider

If you missed us at the recent RSNA meeting, don’t worry. You can still find out about what McKesson Medical Imaging offers through this short video of Marc Crowder, our vice president of Solution Consulting for Radiology and Cardiology, which was taken at the conference.

Marc Crowder, VP, Solution Consulting, Radiology/Cardiology, McKesson from MedicExchange on Vimeo.

Crowder points out that McKesson is more than a company which produces PACS and EHRs. We also offer professional services like hosted storage, staff augmentation, and healthcare IT consulting. And many people don’t know that our PACS comes with an embedded radiology information system (RIS) and also fosters decision support through its access to thousands of case studies and expert diagnostic opinions from around the world.

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Aunt Minne Conference Preview: Q&A With Dr. Jay Patti, Mecklenberg Radiology Associates

Dr. Jay Patti, Mecklenberg Radiology Associates will be one of the presenters at the upcoming Aunt Minnie Online Conference. To preview this exciting event, we reached out to him with some brief questions on effectively implementing PACS.

1. Regarding PACS, what challenges are unique to a high-volume private practice?

Generally speaking radiologists in a private practice are expected to handle a larger patient volume than those in other settings. Academic institutions tyically have residents and medical students where teaching and research are high priorities. This being said the lessons learned from a private practice are readily applicable to other settings.

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