From the January/February 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Sectra’s Bjornemo points out, “Consolidation of imaging, integration of diagnostics, radiology and pathology working together, is not just managing the data but seeing how it develops the clinical practice, and improving the diagnostic side is key. Open APIs and standards compliance and the ability to connect systems needs to continue to create a richer clinical context for users. There is also a shift toward quantitative imaging — allowing health care to become more data-driven — and bringing it all together makes the value of this data even greater.”
James Brusco, product manager, PACS, for Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc. states, “In choosing an enterprise imaging solution such as a DICOM/Multimedia VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) with viewer capability, customers should focus on flexibility and modularity so that they can purchase features and modules which suit their needs. You also need upward and outward scalability to expand the solution’s capacity and to add additional features and modules without fork lifting out the initial purchase.”
So what are the factors that a hospital needs to consider when choosing a system? Interestingly, price isn’t really a major consideration any longer since there are so many other options available. Software-only solutions, also known as SaaS (Software as a Service) is a direction that many vendors are moving toward. Also known as on-demand software, SaaS is a software licensing and delivery model where software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is typically accessed by using a Web browser, and is often the driving force behind enterprise imaging strategies. One of the biggest selling points for SaaS is the potential to reduce IT support costs by outsourcing hardware and software maintenance and support.
INFINITT’s Smarro identified several trends going on within hospitals. “One of the trends we see is hospitals moving away from the hardware purchase with the PACS vendor. The years of ’rack ‘em and stack ‘em’ are long gone. Others want software-only solutions but lack the resources to perform the integration. We have gone full circle again with a modified version of the vendor providing the hardware and software solution. Internal resource availability is key, but unfortunately there are fewer resources to use in most facilities. “
The market has changed in the past few years from one where hardware is on site to one where the physical location of the hardware is immaterial. IT organizations are challenged by the limitations of today’s servers, which are designed to run just one operating system and application at a time. As a result, even small data centers have to deploy many servers, each operating at just 5 to 15 percent of capacity — highly inefficient by any standard. Virtualization uses software like VMWare to simulate the existence of hardware and create a virtual computer system. Doing this allows businesses to run more than one virtual system — and multiple operating systems and applications — on a single server. This can provide economies of scale and greater efficiency.
