Why PACS is Essential for a Healthcare Organization?

PACS stands for picture achieving and communication system. PACS refers to a medical imaging technology that is mainly used in healthcare organizations. It is mainly used for securely storing and transmitting the electronic images and the other clinically relevant reports on a digital ground.

Development of PCAS

It has been seen that nearly all the major medical imaging equipment manufacturers along with the medical offer PACS for hospitals. This system is basically used to store, retrieve, present or even share the images. These images are generally produced by the numerous medical hardware modalities. This includes an X-rays, CT scan, and magnetic resonance imaging along with ultrasonic machines.

The use of PACS can be attributed to DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) that is considered as a standard protocol for managing and transmitting the medical images and other data regarding it.

Components of PACS

There are four major components of PACS. These include:

A hardware imaging machines
A secured network for distributing and exchanging the images of the patients
A workstation or any mobile device for viewing, processing or for any interpretation of images
Electronic archives to store and retrieve the images along with related documentation and reports.

Uses of PACS in healthcare organizations

The PACS technology has four main uses. This technology:

Helps in replacing the need for the hard-copy films along with the management of physical archives.
Allows the possibility of remote access that enables the clinicians in different physical locations for reviewing the same data simultaneously.
Offers an electronic platform for interfacing the images along with the other medical automation system that includes the hospital information system, electronic health records, and radiology information system.
Allows radiologists along with the other radiology and medical personnel for managing the workflow of the examination done on the patients.

Advantages of PACS in a healthcare organization

The main advantage of using PACS at hospitals is that it eliminates the need for manually file and storing it, retrieving and sending sensitive information along with timing and reporting. On the other hand, the medical documentation along with images can be housed in a secured manner in off-site servers. It can even be accessed safely without any security issue from anywhere around the globe with the use of PACS software, workstations, and mobile devices.

The medical imaging technologies such as PACS are increasing their importance each day. This is due to the growing volume of the digital medical images throughout the healthcare industry along with the data analytics of the images that have become more prevalent.

Best PCAS software for the healthcare organization

Ultralinq: Provides the facility to see, evaluate and archive the imaging exams and reports
Vepro PACs: Provides images and document management solution for each department
Care stream Vue PACS: Offers image rich reporting, dictating along with 3D post-processing feature
Aspyra PACS: Offers a designed solution for any work and inflow
Enterprise Workflow Unifier: Shares the patients’ images and radiology related medical records in a quick manner
Telemis- Medical PACS: Provides modular solution for secure medical image distribution and storage
Vidistar PACS: Facilitates image management along with data mining, decision support, and predictive analytics
Power server PACS: Enables practices to perform diagnostic images with the easy assessment
Syngoplaza: Provides 2d/3d routine reading with vendor-neutral archiving
AiDoc, the Ai booster for all PACS: Speeds up radiology by humiliating the abnormalities

Need for PCAS in the healthcare organization

Radiology is the most prolific producer on a traditional ground among the radiologists who have predominantly using PACS for hospitals. Recently, these techniques have been incorporated into other departments that include nuclear machine imaging, cardiology, oncology, pathology, and even dermatology.
The medical images are generally taken and reviewed for the analyzing the clinic along with diagnosing and treating the patient. This is considered as a part of a patient’s care plan. The information that is collected is used for identifying the abnormalities in regards to the anatomy and physiology. All these charts in the progress of the treatment where it provides the clinicians with the scan database of the normal patient that can be used for future references.
The digital access to the most updated version of the medical images, clinical reports and the history of the patients helps in expediting and improving the care that lessens the likelihood of the treatment along with the errors regarding the prescription. This even prevents the testing redundantly. Further, this digital access improves the safety in regards to the patient and helps in saving the healthcare facility along with the time and money of the patient.

The healthcare professionals are often referred to as PACS as they orchestrate a complex set of function to achieve the successful imaging informatics. They have a direct impact on the quality and the safety of the patient care.