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Deploying a PACS: Issues to consider

Application Service Provider PACS: Analyzing Costs of Service

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Towards A New World of Communications in Medicine

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St Paul Radiology Goes Filmless

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Deploying a Picture Archiving and Communications System

Part 2

They will vary by modality and by the purpose of a given deployment, but the minimum DICOM requirements for each device should include the ability to perform verification, a DICOM store, a DICOM print, a modality work list, an archive commitment, and the performed procedure step. If the vendor cannot supply these functions, it is reasonable to ask why this is the case and to question that vendor’s commitment to open standards. The institution will definitely need these functions in the future.

Networking criteria should include an understanding of how the vendor plans to work with the network services group of the information services department. The infrastructure requirements of the device must be known, along with whether it will reside on a separate network and the degree to which it will affect the system’s archives.

The New Game

The sellers of equipment may state that an item is DICOM 3.0 conformant/compliant even when it has only the level of functionality that the manufacturer has developed up to that point. Review of DICOM 3.0 conformance statements over the past 5 to 6 years has made it apparent that progress has been made, but that much improvement is required.

At some time, most institutions will deploy PACS, in one form or other. The PACS project might be just a small imaging network satisfying the needs of the emergency department or integrating an outpatient clinic. It might even serve one of the radiologist-owned imaging centers that is becoming more common. Knowing that all institutions will implement PACS, at some point, makes it important to purchase wisely today the equipment that will have to be integrated in the future. This means securing all of the latest DICOM 3.0 functionality possible in all new equipment purchased, whether the facility’s PACS has already been deployed or not. All too often, new equipment that was purchased a year or less before PACS implementation requires an upgrade before it can be integrated into an imaging network. This does not sit well with executive committees.