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Applications
Going Digital With the acceleration of the trend towards filmless imaging centers and radiology departments, a cost-effective yet reliable and scalable digital image archiving solution is a key challenge facing radiologists, department heads and hospital administrators. Compounding the archiving issue, many new higher resolution and higher density modalities such as multi-slice CT generate large studies consisting of hundreds and in some cases thousands of images.
HIPAA requirements for image management and retention period of 7 to 10 years, is further exacerbating the archiving needs of imaging centers. The archiving needs of many free-standing imaging centers is beginning to resemble that of hospitals as recently as five to ten years ago, with many requiring several terabytes (TB) of storage per year. The table below provides a study-oriented analysis of capacity for studies of various sizes. Digital medical image archiving is an issue that if not adequately addressed can negatively impact the effectiveness and workflow of an imaging center. Revenue and Cost Challenges
High Cost of PACS Imaging centers are beginning to follow the trends in the hospital sector by implementing PACS in order to gain workflow efficiencies. However, many PACS solutions for the imaging center market still cost in excess of $200,000. The long-term total cost of ownership consisting of tens of thousands of dollars for service and maintenance contracts due to the high complexity of these systems, is another hindrance in the adoption of PACS by many imaging centers. In addition, for most PACS vendors, archiving is not a core competency and they are merely integrating high-priced third-party general purpose storage systems. As a result, many imaging centers are facing expensive add-on archiving to their existing PACS. PACS Alternatives A number of imaging centers have adopted PACS alternatives such as CD-based juke box systems coupled with viewing workstations. While the jukebox works reasonably well as long as all studies of interest fit into the system, it is not as appealing once the storage capacity is exceeded. When this happens, system administrators must manually load requested studies into the jukebox. When the administrator is not available, the reading physician must wait. In addition, jukeboxes are prone to mechanical failure and archived CDs outside the jukebox require filing, labeling, and human administration. These so-called PACS alternatives are no longer able to keep up with the growing image management requirements of imaging centers, especially giving referring physician real-time access to images. ImageGrid - The affordable always online archiving solution ImageGrid is a cost-effective, reliable and feature-rich PACS appliance which easily scales to accommodate the growth of imaging practices. ImageGrid offers archiving capacities from 1 TB to tens of terabytes and provides imaging centers the most cost effective always on-line archiving solution. ImageGrid's lightweight, internal database, appliance operating system, and CPU are optimized for performance, and deliver retrieval and routing speeds exceeding capabilities of many high-performance PACS systems. Automated routing also enables images to be archived remotely for compliance with HIPAA Disaster Recovery requirements. |
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Imaging centers are facing revenue challenges with falling insurance reimbursement rates for many procedures while contending with the high cost of advanced digital modalities and advanced software solutions such as Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD). 
