Report: Hospitals considering vendor-neutral imaging solutions

While hospitals may trust their picture archiving and communication system (PCS) vendor, they're not comfortable being locked into a vendor's solution for their entire enterprise, according to a new report from research firm KLAS.

In a report on enterprise imaging--the delivery of medical images across hospital departments--KLAS found that hospital IT vendors are concerned that their PACS vendor's proprietary solution may not translate well from one department to another. They're hoping to build on traditional PACS vendor systems like those from Philips, GE, McKesson and FUJIFILM, KLAS says.

However, they have no intention of being locked into these vendors' solutions. Providers are building PACS-neutral archives and storage-management layers, allowing the PACS to become a physician-friendly viewing and interaction medium that can be replaced without a painful migration process, KLAS says.

If hospitals aren't going the PACS route, they may also work with storage and archive solution vendors, such as EMC, IBM and HP to build solutions allowing access to imaging data. Each of these companies partners with middleware vendors to offer vendor neutral archives that can bring together data from DICOM applications or storage layers.

Some providers also are outsourcing the archive and image management functions to companies like GE, InSite One and Philips, the KLAS report said.

KLAS also noted that while radiology, nuclear medicine and cardiology have adopted digital imaging management heavily, departments like oncology, endoscopy and pathology are far behind in adoption.

To learn more about this study:
- read this KLAS press release