There is no doubt that vendor neutral archives (VNAs) have gained favor over the last several years in managing medical images. But there is some debate over whether hospitals really need both a VNA and a PACS. If PACS can do double duty as VNA and PACS, why do you need both? As we see it, you don’t, as long as you have a true enterprise PACS and here’s why.

Nearly two decades ago, the PACS race was on in Southern California’s Inland Empire. The main event pitted the regional medical center, 439-bed Riverside County Regional Medical Center, against the larger 719-bed Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC). In 1998, Riverside won the race by about six months, installing the first PACS in the region and, in the process, becoming the first hospital in the U.S. to select Sectra PACS.

It was early 2015 when the team at Carilion Clinic decided they had outgrown their PACS and needed to replace their decade-old system.

It can be safely said that the healthcare services industry is in a state of flux like never before. Reform initiatives driving the mandate to create interoperability are not in any way exempting medical imaging.

When X-Ray Associates of New Mexico went live with a new RIS in mid-April, Vice President and COO Sagit Frasier was anxious, but optimistic.

It’s 2016. If you’re not thinking about joining the growing ranks of healthcare providers that are digitally storing all clinical information from across the enterprise so it’s secure, expandable and readily accessible to authorized caregivers working anywhere and anytime, it’s time to wake up and smell the vendor-neutral archive (VNA).

University Hospitals in Cleveland is half of the way through implementing a true enterprise image-management solution—a.k.a. VNA (vendor neutral archive)—and one key insider sees the advance as “a huge goldmine for patient care.”

Modern cancer care urgently demands new approaches. Lives are at risk, and an ever increasing number of cancer patients and complex examinations constitute more of the radiologist's workload than ever before.