All Roads Still Lead to PACS

Ms. PACS: Just a quick comment for the PACS “pepes” post the SNM and SIIM shows. There are new client-server solutions for nuclear medicine invading a PACS near you. And I’ll preface it by saying: “No – this is not a commercial – just an update.” So don’t blow a gasket PACSman….just breathe.

At both SNM and SIIM, I kept seeing the integration of nuclear medicine imaging with multimodality PACS.

Just this week, Siemens showed its Symbia.net client-server solution that’s designed to work with an existing SPECT or SPECT/CT system, RIS and PACS infrastructure. Image uploads to the server database are performed automatically. Additional remote users can be added at any time and installed remotely to grow with the needs of the imaging facility.

The biggest show stopper took a step beyond PACS - a preview to the future of PACS - was 3D modeling. Often used in architecture using AutoCAD software, you can create any complex 3D model - a building, a brain or a SPECT/CT system in a nuclear medicine suite. Thanks Dominic (ala Philips) for the demo and good thing you gave me the cliffnotes.

Then there’s the one from GE Healthcare, I saw this at SIIM a week ago. GE Healthcare integrated Xeleris Suite for Nuclear Medicine into the GE PACS RA1000 workstation. The big push here is enterprise connectivity. This platform provides a single database for patient selection, reporting and archiving for multimodality review, including nuclear medicine tools and reprocessing capabilities. According to GE, the Xeleris Suite enables nuclear medicine physicians and radiologists to do nuclear image reviews together… holding holds…on the Centricity PACS RA1000 workstation.

Here’s one for the small private practices or a Nuclear Medicine or PET/CT department – a new patient scheduling and workflow manager that interfaces with the RIS. Numa made a lot of noise about its new NumaManage – “designed to replace the traditional static whiteboard with a digital, touch screen interface.” It is also a DICOM worklist provider, so the user only needs to input patient information once, and the information is distributed throughout the department.

So what does this all mean – PACS is still important and still the principal imaging management tool. While the EHRs will become the hospital image and data exchange center, offering a unified viewer for all physicians to view all images and media, there is something the enterprise viewer will not be used for – diagnosis. So, PACS maintains its position of importance because – at least for now – it’s the only platform for storing and viewing diagnostic images.

So, can anyone guess what's the next ology to integrate into PACS?