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