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

The server requirements of any modern hospital are daunting; the back-end processing power necessary to operate multiple health information systems across an enterprise of any size requires an ever-shifting configuration of blades, proxies, failover systems, and disaster-recovery solutions. It’s no wonder, then, that a five-hospital system with 2

The typical 10-physician practice will spend $285,240 to comply the new federal mandate to adopt the ICD-10 code set by 2011. The controversial proposal from HHS would significantly increase costs for physician practices and clinical laboratories, according to a new cost study initiated by a broad group of provider organizations and conducted by

No one faces a constantly changing landscape more than the CIO at a large health care institution. Until recently, Michael T. Balassone was CIO at West Virginia University Hospitals, a 522-bed teaching hospital and medical complex in Morgantown. He currently serves as senior information officer, University Medical Associates, Medical University of

Increasingly, radiology-practice CIOs and their hospital counterparts are being called on to interact with leadership across the organization to help drive strategic initiatives. This new level of responsibility requires CIOs to be precise and prepared for conversations with their peers across all of the organization’s business functions.

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.

What do hospital administrators and their CIOs fear above all else? It may be information theft, especially if that information includes sensitive patient data. Nothing grabs the attention as completely as learning that a laptop laden with patient data has slipped out the door. With preparation, though, such an event may be prevented, and if it is

Preparation is the difference between unexpected PACS downtime and a nightmare, Michael D. Toland told his audience in Seattle on May 17 at the 2008 annual meeting of the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine. Toland, who is PACS administrative team manager for the University of Maryland Medical System, Baltimore, presented PACS Worst Case