Starting around 2000, for various technological & feature/functionality reasons, the users of PACS systems began replacing their original PACS. The replacement decision included the need to move study data from the old system to the new system. The term migration became the popular term to describe this task. Over time, methods and approaches have been developed to address the various challenges that can be encountered during a PACS data migration. This paper will describe these strategies and discuss their applicability in migration projects.

The purpose of this whitepaper is to define the attributes, philosophical and technical, of a Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) through understanding the current challenges facing healthcare IT today and how the VNA can address these challenges and play a role in the future of healthcare IT.  

A great whitepaper outlining the key features every customer should be thinking about when when looking at VNA solutions. 

Written by:  Shannon M. Werb – Chief Technical Officer & Chief Operating Officer, Acuo Technologies and Larry R. Sitka – Founder and Lead Software Engineer, Acuo Technologies

January 10, 2011

Wellington, New Zealand – KellerMed Technologies, a leader in health ICT solutions delivering technology products and services to healthcare organisations throughout Australia and New Zealand, has signed an agreement with Sorna Corporation to offer its line of DICOM compliant medical imaging solutions. This agreement further strengthens KellerMed Technologies offering of best-in-class medical imaging products.  

The Minnesota, United States based Sorna Corporation specialises in the design and manufacture of sophisticated systems and software that intelligently automates and independently manages DICOM DISC burning and media importing activities. Its products include clinical work flow-optimised automated DICOM CD/DVD publishing systems, DICOM media import software, and associated DICOM viewing, storage, and digital print gateway products that allow DICOM images to be viewed and printed with PC-compatible peripheral equipment and stored on portable media.

Sales Contact:

info@kellermed.com

Various vendors and professionals in the PACS community have been cluttering the market with their own interpretations of the definition of “Neutral” PACS.  Here is my straight-forward approach and hopefully bring a common understanding within the community as to what being vendor neutral really means and benefits when looking at solutions. 

Common definitions of “Neutral”:

VEA –Vendor Enterprise Archive - PACS vendors archive solution to store multi-ology/multi-department images.  Like in the past, software upgrades, new PACS or even storage system changes with the VEA normally result in an expensive and time consuming data migration of entire image repository.

VNA – Vendor Neutral Archive - A software solution providing DICOM message translation, transformation, object registry and routing services.  It mediates the interoperability between different brands of PACS solutions and clinical workflow applications. It has been known as a PACS that integrates with a various storage platforms and IT strategies.  VNA supports one or many clinical viewing applications, standards based environment, storage virtualization strategies, robust business continuity deployments and virtual environments.

I see “Neutral” as the freedom of Choice, Control and Flexibility to ensure data ownership.  

For a long time it has been generally accepted that the PACS vendor owns the archive and stores images in its preferred format, typically in a hybrid format that is only readable by that particular vendor.  Figuring who better knows your VEA than your PACS vendor?  This scenario has been proven to lock customers into one particular PACS vendor. 

Let KellerMed Technologies show how the next generation of technology can help you break free from the limitations of your current or next PACS.  

James Keller - KellerMed Technologies
jkeller@kellermed.com

Combining a DICOM and XDS archive into a single repository for images and documents across an enterprise.
 
PACS has been seen as large proprietary data silos of DICOM images. While, information systems (RIS, CIS, Ordercomms, Clinical letters system, Discharge summary system, E-Prescribing etc) all hold digital information in independent data silos, due to lack of document standards.  The only way for clinician to access the full clinical history of a patient is by looking at paper notes, where the documents are printed and organised for each patient.
 
Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) provides a document standard that is changing the EPR world completely. Information systems will create the documents and send them off for storage and display.
 
The other big advantage is we are currently struggle with old outdated information systems which are difficult to remove and replace. By adopting XDS standards with a Vendor Neutral PACS, information systems and PACS will send all data to the XDS repository and hence, one will find it as easy to replace an information system or PACS as it is to replace a CT/MRI scanner.
 
The archive all strategy of XDS provides a means of providing an EPR, and replacing the paper notes similarly to how PACS replaced the film packet. XDS connects all information systems even currently existing Information systems.
 
We see this as a huge advantage and cost savings to being able to deploying regional repositories that are both Vendor Neutral PACS repositories and XDS repositories on the same infrastructure with an internationally accepted standard.   Please contact KellerMed Technologies to learn how this deployment strategy can be integrated into your existing infrastructure.

James Keller - KellerMed Technologies
jkeller@kellermed.com

KellerMed Technologies brings more than a decade of experience in performing data migrations from and to every major PACS and RIS solution.  Customers can contract KellerMed, but typically the PACS, DICOM or HL7 vendors outsource data migration services to KellerMed in an effort to offer expert migration as they focus on the PACS and RIS implementation. KellerMed Technologies uses the latest DICOM and HL7 migration tools which are continually enhanced and designed to be robust and flexible to meet the individual, and sometimes challenging, needs of our customers.

Having the ability to quickly adapt and customized every migration to adhere to each customers’ unique requirements, making data migration more of an art than a science. A successful migration requires experience, flexible software tools, technical expertise, and well-defined processes. With KellerMed, you have all of these key elements working together throughout your migration project.

KellerMed has demonstrated their expertise by partnering with PACS and DICOM vendors who specialize in maintaining and upgrading DICOM and HL7 migration tools, as rapidly as possible, while still maintaining the data integrity required for Diagnostic Imaging. Learn how KellerMed can customize a migration method that is right for you.

Please contact KellerMed Technologies and we are happy to provide a free consultation regarding your data migration needs or to learn more about our flexible migration tools that can be tailored to your unique requirements.

info@kellermed.com