The road to PACS perfection is paved with distractions and pitfalls, Paul Chang, MD, FSIIM, says. Chang is professor of radiology, vice chair of radiology informatics, and medical director of enterprise imaging at University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois. During the 2010 Dwyer Lecture, “The Role of Imaging Informatics in the Next Generation

For over thirty years, Radiation Physics Inc (Beltsville, Maryland) has been providing mobile imaging services to the Baltimore and Washington, DC, metropolitan areas, serving long-term–care and assisted-living clients, as well as prisons and private residences. “We started doing this in 1976, and the business model has been pretty much the same

In the late 1990s, Yale School of Medicine, New haven, Connecticut, implemented its first PACS. James Brink, MD, chair of the department of radiology and professor of diagnostic radiology, recalls how radiologists initially adapted to the brave new digital world: “It took some of the more senior radiologists a while to get used to using a cine

Sharing images across any health care enterprise represents a challenge, but doing so across the Pacific Rim was the dilemma faced in 2003 by the US Air Force. Taking up this challenge were Lt Col Grant Tibbetts, MD, now radiology consultant to the surgeon general, and Tom Lewis, the director of the Air Force PACS Office. “The largest hospital in

Ever since digital imaging liberated radiologists from the site of image acquisition, radiology practices have labored to patch together distributed reading solutions that would efficiently meet the needs of multiple clients, balance workflow, and enable subspecialization.

When Hawaii Health Systems Corp (HHSC), Honolulu, began shopping for a PACS solution for three of its five island regions, newly hired CIO Money Atwal had a few unique issues to take into consideration. Though multisite PACS configurations are increasingly commonplace, most don’t have to cross water in order to work. Atwal needed a solution that

The US Navy deployed its first PACS—a military-specified system with limited functionality—in 1996. Since then, the Navy has operated multiple PACS from a variety of vendors, all selected through a contracting process monitored by the US Department of Defense (DoD). “Our purchasing process enables us always to select the best of breed,” Edwin Doorn

Replacing technology is always nerve-wracking, but it is particularly volatile when the systems being replaced are a PACS and a RIS, systems at the heart of daily function for radiology departments and hospitals.