The rumors of PACS death have been greatly exaggerated. PACS has been, and still is, very much the hub of the radiology department. Radiology continues to be the early adopter of technology in most hospitals. Efficiency is key.
Many trends have emerged over time – some have faded quickly while others have taken hold and had a long-lasting impact. One of the latest is the notion of Deconstructed PACS which at its core is a best-of-breed approach. So in essence, use different solutions (PACS, VNA, Viewers) from multiple vendors than go with a single-source vendor approach. There’s been a lot of buzz about this new model but is it one that will be applied across the industry or is it ideal for a specific type of healthcare institution?
To answer this critical question we deployed our Research Cloud to quickly gather feedback from nearly 300 radiology and medical imaging leaders and decision makers. Here’s a bit of what we found out.
“[Philips] is very dependable, great uptime record, support is excellent, very user friendly.”
“Everything works like it's supposed to. [Sectra] is very easy to use. I have no issues. Recent updates have made it even easier.”
[Philips] is stable and delivers on its core mission. On the other hand, it lacks functionality in terms of filters, work distribution and communication.”
“Very good system and GE is very responsive to our needs.”
“Have been with AGFA for approximately 12 years and they area a great PACS group/system. Fixing to upgrade to their EI platform and cannot wait.”
“[Fuji] support services are excellent and the product is easy to use.”
“We have had some issues with [Sectra]. The measurement tools are less than Ideal and integration with the EMR has been rough and slow to occur. To be fair the integration problems have been on both sides.”
“[IBM] We have always been able to get an issues dealt with in a timely manner. Overall easy to use for the technologist and anything I have to do on the PACS admin side is an easy process as well.”
“Implementation of the PACS was extremely difficult. [IBM] did not meet our support needs regarding capabilities and training. In addition, the system is more cumbersome to use than other vendor solutions.”
“Not fond of Fuji. They do not stay up with the times.”
“[AGFA] Excellent service and support. Excellent integration with Epic and PS360. Good 3rd party integrations as well for post processing.”
Radiology has always been the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, in adopting new
technologies and automating anywhere it can. It’s also been the department most focused on efficiency.
It comes as no surprise then that it is also a department which is unafraid to try something new, even if it means trying different configurations and replacing incumbent vendors.
While there is a certain segment of the market that prefers the Deconstructed PACS model
(namely high-end academic hospitals and research institutions with large budgets),
the preferences of the majority of organizations reveal a strong preference towards single-source.
This makes some practical sense since a large percentage of these organizations have already headed the single-vendor path across their enterprise with Cerner, Epic, MEDITECH, and CPSI. However, radiology has always been a bit of a maverick willing to go its own way, so it very well could be that five years down the road the pendulum could swing back towards best-of-breed. But for now, single-source is winning the day.
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