Cutting Edge Issues
Internet-Enhanced Physician Practices

Deploying a PACS: Issues to consider

Application Service Provider PACS: Analyzing Costs of Service

eHealth:
Towards A New World of Communications in Medicine

Case Study Zone
St Paul Radiology Goes Filmless

Who is eMed?
Mission Statement
Customer Base
Partnerships
Product Offerings
Support Services

St Paul Radiology Goes Filmless

Part 3

By 1998, St Paul Radiology had amassed an archive of 2 million images via the new system. Since then, it has stored an additional 6 million images for a total archive of 8 million images. The acceptance of the system led to a burgeoning rate at which images were transmitted, viewed and processed electronically. Additional usage demands were expected in proportion to the opening of new facilities and the welcoming of additional client sites.

To remedy this problem, St Paul Radiology recently upgraded its eMed system with a server many times faster and more powerful than the original. The server is a Sun 4700 utilizing a Unix operating system with a processor speed of 4x400 MHz which will include a 1 terabyte on-line image storage capacity in September.

“The upgrade has already made a dramatic difference in system performance,” says Rasmussen. “We are in a position to easily handle the ever-increasing volume of image and text transactions.”

WENT WITH LEADER

St Paul Radiology chose as its PACS vendor eMed Technologies because of the company’s proven ability to combine market-leading technology with comprehensive network-based customer support services. With systems in approximately one of every four hospitals, imaging centers, and radiologist homes throughout the nation, eMed is the leading provider of client-server and Internet-based medical imaging workflow solutions, a status that also held appeal to St Paul Radiology’s decision-makers.

eMed offers a line of PACS products that include FRAMEWAVE diagnostic reading workstations (with software for reading both CR and DR images and cross-sectional studies), FRAMEWAVE compression server with RAID on-line storage, and a FRAMEWAVE archive server offering MOD archival storage as well as FRAMEWAVE Data Bridge providing RIS/HIS integration and connection to both standards-compliant and non-compliant imaging modalities. Importantly for applications such as that found at St Paul Radiology, eMed’s PACS products feature both DICOM and ACR standards compliance.

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