White Papers

By Ken Compton and Herman Oosterwijk

The question of what monitor to use for diagnostic purposes with digital medical images has been a recurring theme ever since these images were first generated. Variations on this theme are: Can I use a commercial monitor for diagnosing medical images? Is a 3-megapixel (MP) display sufficient to look at chest radiographs? Related questions that we are often asked are: How should I calibrate these monitors? What is the impact of environmental light on the diagnostic capability of displays in the ER or the ICU?

This white paper provides practical guidelines for the selection of the right monitor for the right diagnostic application. We also will describe how to keep your monitor operating at diagnostic quality. In addition, we provide an introduction to the characteristics of displays and the key parameters that describe monitor performance.

This White Paper describes VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) its use, and pros and cons in depth.  (VNA) is a medical storage management device that provides scalable image and information and life cycle management so that medical images and related information can be queried, stored, and retrieved in a manner that is defined by open standards such as DICOM, HL7, IHE, XDS and PIX/PDQ, at multiple department, enterprise, and regional level while maintaining patient privacy and security. Characteristic for a VNA is that it provides a patient-centric approach that transcends upgrades and changes of the different viewing, acquisition, and workflow management components as they should be interchangeable without having to migrate, convert, or change the data formats or interface of the VNA.

This White Paper about Vendor Neutral Archive was sponsored by TeraMedica Healthcare Technology. Please visit their site for further information on their Vendor Neutral Archive Solution: http://www.teramedica.info

A critical component of a PACS system is its archive and image management system. Increasingly, this “back-bone” is shared by multiple departments, and able to manage not only pure image, DICOM based data, but also related information and serve the complete enterprise. The ultimate goal is to provide a vendor neutral archive (VNA) as it eliminates multiple migrations and can be a true core of a regional solution implementing the appropriate open standards such as DICOM, HL7, IHE and XDS as well as PIX/PDQ. This checklist can be used for a RFP, RFQ or RFI of the archiving and storage management solution of a radiology or cardiology PACS or enterprise imaging solution and will allow a user to determine whether or not a potential archive solution is a true VNA.

This White Paper about Vendor Neutral Archive was sponsored by TeraMedica Healthcare Technology. Please visit their site for further information on their Vendor Neutral Archive Solution: http://www.teramedica.info

Communications is at the core of every good hospital. Doctors need to contact nurses about care of patients and to tap them for information and data. Nurses require the expertise of doctors when making care decisions. Without a good  communications system, a hospital could actually endanger the lives of patients it hopes to serve.

The Cardiovascular PACS RFP

Developing a cardiovascular Picture Archiving and Communications System (CPACS) Request for Proposal (RFP) is similar to efforts for radiology with the exception that cardiology can be far more extensive in terms of requirements. The purpose of any RFP is to secure consensus of the requirements for a system acquisition, and to solicit responses from vendors to determine who best meets those requirements.

Defining the RFP

I have found in my experience that there is a wide variation in the RFP process, and that it can be a daunting process for any organization. After all, most documents tend to follow similar outlines and content, and can result in multi-inch binder responses from the vendors. Who, in their right mind has the time to thoroughly review one of these documents, let alone multiple vendor responses! Ideally though, if one takes the time to prepare an extensive requirements document, and the vendor takes time to thoroughly respond to it, then shouldn’t the facility take the time to review the responses? After all, what is the point of the process if its objective is to aid in the selection of a vendor?