Nick Degomme
There are PACS available to fulfill the most basic needs of small health care providers to the complex needs of large hospitals. Described below are some basic and advanced features that are available on many PACS systems.
In the United States there are a number of regulations concerning patient confidentiality, diagnostic viewing quality and backing up of patient data. This guide will touch on some of the most important of these regulations below.
Without going into extreme detail there is a requirement that all patient information be kept confidential. This affects PACS with regards to who has access to which patient data. Many PACS vendors, particularly those offering web viewers, have implemented permission-based user accounts, which can restrict individual users of PACS to view only patients matching specific criteria. For example, a referring physician may have an account set up only to view his/her own referred patients by filtering his/her access through the use of the “Referring Physician” DICOM tag.
Other aspects of maintaining patient confidentially involve the transmission of any patient data over an unsecured network (i.e. the Internet). To resolve this issue, web viewers often encrypt the data as it is sent from PACS to the authorized user. There are a number of methods to encrypt patient data sent from one PACS to another over the Internet. PACS vendors should be able to offer some information and options and it is best that this be discussed before purchase.
The FDA also regulates image viewers. Only FDA approved viewers should be purchased for diagnostic purposes. This includes stand-alone software applications as well as web-based viewers. For mammography applications there are strict rules outlined in the Mammography Standards Quality Act as well as additional guidelines enforced by accreditation organizations. Before purchasing any viewing software, particularly for mammography, it is important to verify that it meets FDA and accreditation organization standards.
Finally, all patient data must be backed up in case of error or disaster. Ideally images from PACS should be backed up to another PACS located off-site. Purchasing a second PACS may not be economically feasible for many care providers, so some companies offer remote back up services. This can be much more cost effective than purchasing a second PACS and can be entirely automated, making it much easier than burning studies to CD or DVD and then moving them off-site for storage.
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1 thoughts on “PACS Systems: Features and Regulations”
Helped me a lot, just what I was looking for : D.