Shared Multisite Virtual PACS from Ten Individual PACS/RIS Systems Developed

By MedImaging International staff writers
Posted on 31 Mar 2015

The Cheshire and Merseyside districts in the UK have merged ten Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) and Radiology Information Systems (RIS) into one shared multi-site virtual PACS. The merger of the complex multi-institution health economy was presented at the 2015 European Congress of Radiology (ECR) in Vienna (Austria).

The virtual PACS allows the health economy to function as a single institution, and the new workflow enables cross-site reporting, reporting outside office hours, and separation of the acquisition from the reporting workflow.

Image: Schematic of the Virtual Multi-Site PACS (Photo courtesy of Carestream).

The health institutions included seven acute district hospitals, a regional cancer center, a pediatric tertiary center, and three small specialist hospitals, together generating with a more than 2 million exams per year. The requirements that the new PACS had to fulfill included the implementation of a single master identifier, separated acquisition and reporting, a single study instance, and display of prior exams.

The PACS system that was selected was the Carestream (Rochester, NY, USA) Multi-Site Virtual PACS. The system was installed under budget, and within the six-month timetable. More than 100 terabytes of data was migrated into the system.

Related Links:
Carestream