I recently wrote an article on Enterprise Imaging for Radiology Business Journal. While I cannot reprint that article here, you can access it using this URL link to the Journal’s e-publication. The article reinforces the concept of broadening the scope of enterprise imaging beyond consideration of the traditional, DICOM-oriented departmental PACS to include images produced during such procedures as surgery, endoscopy, ophthalmology, and numerous other “oscopies” and “ologies” from bronchoscopy to urology. It also emphasizes the need to include non-DICOM as well as DICOM images, still-frame images as well as video clips, image sets that are the result of ordered procedures, as well as image sets that are simply captured on mobile devices during office visits or encounters in departments such as dermatology and emergency.
Organizations planning on replacing a PACS, deploying a VNA, or image-enabling their EMR with a universal viewer really should develop their Enterprise Imaging Strategy before making any major system purchase. Every component in the Enterprise Imaging Strategy needs to plug and play with all of the actors up and down the line.