RIS / PACS : Low Cost, Customizable, Scalable, Industry Standard, HIS Interoperable

The total cost of ownership of many commercial RIS (Radiology Information Systems) and PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) solutions with recurring licensing fees, make it rather prohibitive and in many cases it is an unnecessary expenditure, when low cost options are available that are equally robust, scalable and meet industry standards. An imaging or diagnostic center or a large multi-specialty hospital can leverage dcm4chee, an open-source PACS which is well established, along with web-based open-source DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine)  image viewers. With some amount of customized work to develop a RIS that meets the organizations workflow and connectivity to existing HIS (Hospital Information Systems), if any, a low cost, customizable, scalable, industry standard, RIS/PACS solution is achievable.

 

In addition to Radiology there are several specialties in a typical multi-specialty hospital where medical images are generated and/or required for diagnostic purposes. Some of these would be Cardiology, Dental, Dermatology, ENT, Gastroenterology, Hematology, Neurosciences, Nuclear Medicine, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Oncology, Orthopedics, Ophthalmology, Pathology, Pulmonary Medicine, Virology, etc. Many of these departments would engage various types of equipment or probes to acquire images or perform functional assessment of specific regions of the anatomy, such as radiography, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging, etc.  Some of these imaging modalities may be DICOM compliant and other may be Non-DICOM compliant. Some may work with digital video, still pictures or even scan documents, etc. to generate images.

 

While in some instances the cost of commercial RIS/PACS solutions may be a deterrent, in other cases, having a customized workflow may be necessary, but not readily possible with commercial software. A feasible alternative is to leverage dcm4chee, the open-Source PACS system with a customized RIS built around it. Several open-source DICOM Viewer options are available.

 

Having a custom built RIS/PACS solution gives you control of your own data for reporting, data analysis, and research. You can decide to leverage Cloud storage solutions, add on other custom RIS / PACS related features including:

 

1) Patient Scheduling

2) Patient Registration

3) Workflow Management

4) Document Management

5) PACS – acquire data from any DICOM and non-DICOM devices.

6) Viewer – the viewing platform for PACS with DICOM image management for reading images and diagnoses.

7) Patient Notes

8) Billing

9) Analyses and statistics for management decisions, resource allocation, goal setting, etc.

10) Document Delivery – for electronic delivery of reports to referring physicians.

11) Transcription – an integrated transcription module.

12) Referrals – immediate access to patient test results by referring physicians

13) Multi-Clinic Interoperability

 

Interfacing with existing HIS software, bar code scanning, speech recognition for radiologists dictation and electronic ordering can be readily included.

 

Additional briefs available at:

http://newcreationit.com/healthcare/IT-in-healthcare

and

http://newcreationit.com/healthcare-services/radiology-information-system-ris-with-pacs

 

Contact NewCreationIT for your customized RIS / PACS software solution today: business@newcreationit.com

 

About NewCreationIT.com

NewCreationIT leverages open-source software to provide customized solutions for radiology practices by implementing affordable radiology information systems with the integration of PACS, image feed modalities and the implementation of IHE scenarios. Software solutions can be tailor-made for small radiology practices to radiological departments of any size including hospitals with several locations and workplaces.

Tags: DICOM, open-source, PACS Software, RIS Software, RIS/PACS Software