“One debate currently flourishing in the imaging informatics community is whether to go with single or multiple vendors when purchasing or replacing a RIS or PACS.”
I reckon the reason why such debates still exists are due to the lack of sites like binaryhealthcare 🙂
Radiology PACS has been around a long time now, I gather there are sites actually going through a third cycle replacement for legacy systems and in yet the concept of integrated RIS/PACS have not caught on totally. Granted that the “best of breed” theory does hold its fort but surely there exists a suitable for each facility.
Ok, I jested 🙂
Back to the topic, as mentioned in the original article, “An important consideration is whether to replace the RIS at the same time. Continuing with an outdated RIS often leads to disappointment in the new acquisition because an older RIS can interfere with improvements offered by newer PACS”.
And for the records, I agree with most of the quotes found in the article, integrated RIS/PACS is the way to go, you get less “finger pointing”, single contact, less cost (license, manpower, hardware, electricity etc etc), I’d however, like to point out that there is a huge difference between integrated and interfaced.
Truly integrated solutions (not just single-vendor solutions) will also deliver more efficient workflow as a single database will reduce the turnaround time (as opposed to systems that are interfaced), in addition, the numerous benefits mentioned above will only be fully realised if the solution is an integrated one.
However, the original article has several points worth mulling over, you can access it here.
BinaryHealthCare (BNHC) 