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The Time is Now for Deconstructed PACS

April 1, 2014

AuntMinnie LogoBy Brad Levin, AuntMinnie.com contributing writer

It was a simpler time just a few decades ago in Radiology:  film, patient jackets, rolloscopes, lite boxes, armies of transcriptionists and ancillary staff.  But that was all about to change. They said the future was digital, so radiologists slowly and methodically blazed a path leaving film behind, transforming the way they had always executed their craft, to make way, for a better way.  PACS was nothing short of a revolution, dramatically improving productivity, quality and access.  Fast-forward to today, and the PACS glow has vastly dimmed.  What went wrong?  PACS is a four-letter acronym, but lately many have been calling PACS four-letter words of their own.  Increasingly, many believe that the next PACS renaissance is here, but it’s not PACS at all.  The latest strategy for imaging informatics is actually “Deconstructed PACS”, where the core elements of PACS are best-of-breed or component-based solutions, integrated together using standards-based approaches.  The end result is a state-of-the-art solution that yields dramatically greater benefits than traditional PACS, and simultaneously enables the institution to exert more control over their imaging informatics assets.

Once upon a time

The earliest PACS approaches cobbled together disparate systems that struggled to simply capture and move images across dual networks; one dedicated for images and one for demographics.  Next, client/server PACS deployed thick-clients to do the work, which then gave way to web-based PACS delivering images in browser-based viewers.  Each approach had its own set of limitations that required creative operational and technical workarounds.  By the mid to late 2000s most institutions had gone digital for the first or second time, and analysts began to see on the horizon the next wave of replacement PACS.  Except they were wrong.

Brad Levin of Visage Imaging

Brad Levin of Visage Imaging

The wave never crested because institutions didn’t want to replace PACS with PACS, trading one set of pluses and minuses for another set of pluses and minuses from a different vendor.  The institutional pain of change was perceived not to be worth the investment for the anticipated gain.  For many institutions, the years continued to roll into the next without much change.  Problems and enhancement requests persisted, leaving a trail of radiologist wants and frustration, as well as limitations in productivity, referring satisfaction, accessibility, quality, and business flexibility.

Modalities drive clinical innovation and informatics challenges

The steady drumbeat of modality innovations (e.g., CR/DR, mega-multi-slice CT, PET/CT, digital mammography) continued to push the limits of PACS.  For example, when large CT studies started to gain prominence, PACS rolled out improvements to reduce the time to first image display to offer the veil of performance.  Technologists assigned to CT implemented prospective post-acquisition workflows to thicken up thin-slice studies, and perform multi-planar reconstructions as secondary captures.  Another workaround was the local pre-caching of studies to disk, so PACS could seemingly stay ahead of the reading radiologist.  And if advanced capabilities were required, there was always the specialty workstation over in “the other room, down the hall”.  I’m sure you are familiar with those workstations – for advanced visualization/3D, for templating, for echo, for PET/CT, for cardiac CTA, for diffusion imaging, for cardiac analysis, etc.  Women’s health experienced a similar renaissance, and spawned their own set of solutions for digital mammography interpretation, breast US, breast MR, etc.  These workstations work dutifully, but usually only if you are sitting right in front of them.  The more workstations that cropped up, the more difficult they were to manage.  Frequently they each had their own viewers, and some came with their own image archives.

Within the last few years, digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) has rapidly become the defacto largest modality on the block, delivering massive studies 6 gigabytes in size, comprising 1.5 gigabytes per image, per breast, per view.  And of course the size only grows when DBT and related DBT priors are considered.  Traditional PACS was never designed to easily manage studies of this magnitude, and vendors are going through the same growing pains they went through in the mid-2000s when burgeoning multi-slice CT volumes were establishing a foothold.

Workflow challenges

In the early days, PACS were defining.  Radiology practices marketed themselves on the strength of their PACS and referring physician viewers.  Frequently the viewers sold themselves and referrals spiked as physicians directed their referrals to where they were provided the best imaging results.  But as PACS became widely deployed in the mid to late 2000s, and innovations stagnated, PACS was no longer differentiating.  Everyone had PACS.  Referring physician viewers lagged behind the usability of mainstream consumer technology, and referring physicians were stuck with viewers that were dated, scrolling was choppy, and the viewers were falling behind in support of the latest web browsers.  Physicians were implementing EMRs, replacing their PCs, and the image viewers they were provided wouldn’t work with the browsers that came with the new computers.

All the while, the practice of Radiology got more complex.  Health systems were expanding in size and scope, also becoming payors and forming accountable care organizations.  Hospitals were being merged and consolidated via acquisition, forming large systems of heterogenous PACS.  The same occurred in outpatient radiology, through the development of large regional and national chains.  Radiology groups developed hybrid reading models, where they would read for their own imaging centers, hospitals in the community, other image generating physician practices, as well as bringing in house after-hours reads.  Teleradiology firms had also expanded their focus beyond traditional teleradiology, to include the provision of local radiology expertise, as well as anytime subspecialty reads from nationally deployed teams of radiologists.

Today, these sophisticated workflows are in place throughout Radiology; however, the manifestation of technology in practice is not a pretty picture.  Just look around.  Radiologist desktops have multiple workstations, each with their own mice, trackballs, speech microphones, high-res displays, etc.  Mammography reading rooms are essentially mini heat islands, complete with a litany of workstations, displays and keypads on the desktop, and some wall mounted displays too.  Crowded physician desktops even spawned a creative name for multi-workstation, multi-location reading:  swivel-chair workflow.  And as the number of software applications, workstations, reading locations and overall contracts grew, so did the size of the operational, training, and support teams responsible for keeping things working smoothly.

“A” case for deconstruction

At the turn of the millennium, a few visionary Radiologists at UAB developed an enterprise archiving solution called the Super DICOM Archive.  In 2002, IT visionaries in Minnesota developed what would be termed years later a so-called, Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA).  AuntMinnie’s first article about that company described their solution as “a method of integrating and optimizing digital image management networks”.  While the aforementioned firm would in later years grow their super-duper archive into a PACS, both of these companies were arguably the first to build successful businesses around their archive.

Reflecting back, the launch of these archives represented a milestone in the deconstruction of PACS.   They proved that you could remove the archive, or “A” from the PACS equation, and not cause a catastrophic failure with PACS.  It actually worked.  Not only did it work, by focusing on the archive, these firms developed robust solutions that arguably had greater reliability and scalability than the “A” from PACS vendors.  Years later, by focusing on the archive, innovations were brought to the market such as image lifecycle management tools, support of XDS standards, and the enablement of the consolidation of images across the enterprise, including DICOM and non-DICOM images.

What these archive vendors brought to the marketplace was also control.  Institutions no longer needed to purchase an isolated archive from all of their imaging vendors, and the conventional wisdom was as they replaced their imaging solutions, they no longer needed to do migration after migration of their archived image data.

You “C”,  deconstruction connects and informs

As noted previously, the rise of the mega-private practice and multi-state/regional health system have led to their fair share of workflow challenges.  The difficulty of assigning who reads what and when, grows exponentially when contractual quality of service clauses come into play.  Why?  Because today, the location of subspecialty radiologists could be at site A, site B across town, at home, virtually across the country, or for some practices, across the globe.

While “C”, or communication, has always been an integral part of the PACS, it has never been the focal point of PACS.  For years, vendors argued the merits of RIS-driven or PACS-driven workflow, without an ultimate winner ever being named.  Some PACS developed better, more intuitive worklists than others, but today, PACS has not adequately arrived at a solution that addresses the challenges of modern radiology workflow.  Due to this inaction, new solutions spawned that had the communication focus that traditional PACS lacked.

Universal worklists and workflow engines were developed several years ago in the attempt to minimize and/or eliminate the challenges of the modern practice of radiology.  Without a smoothly flowing operation, radiologists are less productive, studies are not interpreted in a timely manner and the external perception of the practice is at risk when there are operational failures.  Streamlining workflow boosts productivity and minimizes the number of FTE operational staff required to massage and flow the required digital paperwork, so the most appropriately trained radiologist, who is available, reads the right study (or studies), at the right time.

HL7 is the bloodstream of the workflow engine, communicating with a variety of upstream and downstream systems.  And once workflow is humming, the way to seek continuous improvement is through the availability of data analytics.  Some of today’s workflow engines include their own data analytics engines, while other robust independent analytics solutions are also available.  No longer are practice analytics relegated to assumption or guessing, practices with analytics solutions can directly work with radiologists who have productivity challenges as compared to their peers, as well as work collaboratively with their customers to better understand and consult around referral patterns that deviate from expectations.

The componentization of PACS is also benefiting from integration advancements and simplified, yet sophisticated application programming interfaces (APIs).  Years ago, most system integrations were basic ‘fire and forget’ commands.  Today, integrations increasingly provide a patient context-aware, intuitive, rich user experience.  These integrations offer flexibility using XML, COM and other methods to provide the best user experience possible.  In Radiology, this translates to single desktop bi-directional launching of images, access to current and prior patient reports, insights into valuable clinical histories, and for mobile devices, the ability to deliver app-to-app integration.

The “P”innacle of deconstructed PACS

Images are the heart and soul of Radiology.  Radiologists sit in front of their workstations and viewers everyday practicing the art of Radiology, reading tens of thousands of studies per year.  Given how integral images are to Radiologists, it’s surprising that today’s workstations and viewers have nearly identical capabilities to the same systems that were implemented 5-10+ years ago.  During that timeframe however, the number of workstations and viewers has significantly spiked.  For radiology groups and health systems that read on and/or maintain multiple PACS, the number of different user interfaces that need to be learned by radiologists can be in the dozens.  Referring physicians served by those health systems with multiple PACS frequently don’t know which viewer to open to view their patients’ images.  “P”icture is the first word in PACS, but all too often with traditional PACS, viewer capabilities have lagged behind and only frustrated those it’s supposed to serve.

Deconstructed PACS enables institutions to gain control of their image volumes and optimize workflow, but perhaps most importantly, they are able to choose the best viewer available for interpretation and referring physician access.  Whatever you want to call them—enterprise viewers, universal viewers, univiewers or archive neutral viewers (ANV)—viewer technology exists today that enables institutions to stop using the numerous viewers of today, and instead consolidate image interpretation and referring physician viewing with a single viewer for nearly all clinical needs.  This optimal viewer is fast and clinically adept, providing a single desktop for radiologists and referring physicians.  Advanced visualization is a native capability of the best viewers, and enables interpretation from thin-slice data, on-the-fly.  With a single viewer, breast imaging is no longer served with a separate island of viewers and workstations, instead digital mammography, DBT, breast US and breast MR are all read with the same viewer.  This same viewer also supports ‘ologies’ outside of Radiology, such as Cardiology and other image generating areas, including the visualization of non-DICOM images.  And lastly, many enterprise viewers also support mobile access to images.

Deconstructed PACS adds value

By bringing together best-of-breed solutions for archive, workflow, and viewing needs, the sum is far greater than the parts.  Each individual component can be optimized to deliver the very best solution available, but additionally, the integrated solution enables the institution to gain control over their imaging strategy.  As IT organizations have gained more influence and responsibility for imaging IT, they’ve been seeking solutions that enable operational improvement through the consolidation of images, consolidation of viewers and physical reduction of the number of servers that drive them.  IT also is seeking improvement in the security, business continuity and disaster recovery of imaging IT.  And now that IT has delivered the enterprise-wide accessible EMR (and HIEs), they want to offer a single point of imaging results access for physicians.  Deconstructed PACS offers all of these attractive capabilities to IT.

With ACR’s Imaging 3.0 initiative, Radiology is focused not just on interpretation, but on delivering value.  While traditional PACS yielded productivity breakthroughs, recent years have delivered more of the status quo.  Deconstructed PACS offers institutions the ability to leapfrog the capabilities of the past.  Improvements and streamlining workflow and viewers enable higher quality, faster interpretations with greater accuracy, with immediate access to all priors, and a single point of imaging access from the EMR.  Furthermore, the benefits of image consolidation are well known, as VNAs have been widely deployed over the last 5+ years.  Deconstructed PACS enables these benefits, as well as insights via analytics to continuously improve imaging IT operations.  Through continuous improvement, access to state-of-the-art technologies and higher quality interpretations, Radiologists can offer better service to referring physicians.

It’s time for Deconstructed PACS to break down the barriers of traditional PACS, and set new standards of care for Radiology.  The time for Deconstructed PACS is now.

Brad Levin is the general manager, North America, for Visage Imaging. He is a frequent industry speaker and author, with a more than 20-year imaging career spanning government, consulting, and commercial roles.

Visage Imaging, Inc.
12625 High Bluff Drive, Suite 205
San Diego, CA 92130

Phone: (858) 345-4410
Toll Free: (888) 998-4724

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