October 3, 2024

NVT Health

Health Blog

Leveraging Cloud PACS for Improved Radiology Teamwork

These days, healthcare changes so quickly that technology has become an important way to help people do better. People who work in healthcare can do their jobs and get along with each other better because of this.

This is very clear in imaging. For diagnosis and treatment, it is important to be able to send and receive medical images quickly and safely.

Cloud-based Picture Archiving and Communication Systems, or PACS, are one tool that has made a big difference in the health care field.

This piece will talk about the changes that Cloud PACS is making to how radiologists work together and how it helps healthcare workers in big ways.

What makes cloud PACS different and better than on-premise PACS?

People will handle and share medical images in very different ways when PACS is moved to the cloud. With cloud PACS, you can store and send medical images in a way that is not only flexible and cheap, but also very safe. Images and data are stored in remote data centers with cloud PACS.

Cloud-based PACS is great because it makes it easier for doctors, experts, and other healthcare workers to talk to each other. Standard PACS systems can make it hard for people to work together due to technology and physical issues. Cloud PACS solves these issues by allowing you to access medical images and data from anywhere and at any time.

Why it’s a good idea to use cloud-based PACS for group work

Radiologists and doctors can easily look at images and patient data on any computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone that is connected to the internet. PACS tools hosted in the cloud make this possible. Medical professionals can look at pictures, talk to coworkers, and make important choices from anywhere, like the hospital, the clinic, or home.

Radiologists can quickly make diagnoses and plan treatments because they can share data right away with experts, other doctors, and other members of the healthcare team. Often, Cloud PACS also has tools like live chat and annotations that let users connect and work together right in the app.

Cloud PACS can be used instead of traditional PACS systems that need a lot of money to be spent on hardware and equipment at the beginning. You can use cloud PACS instead of these standard PACS solutions. It is cheap and flexible. Healthcare companies can easily adjust their computer power and storage to meet their changing needs without having to spend a lot of money on repairs or updates. It is also simple to view images and data from various locations thanks to cloud PACS. Healthcare companies whose networks are spread out in different places will love this.

People who work in healthcare need to make sure that private patient information is kept safe and secure. It is being made safer and more compliant by adding more steps. Security and safety rules are very strict for cloud PACS providers to follow. This keeps hackers, data breaches, and other people who shouldn’t have access to patient data from getting to it. With cloud-based PACS, both health care workers and patients can feel safe because the data is kept in secure data centers that follow HIPAA rules.

Integration with EHR systems is very important in hospitals because it speeds up work and makes it easy for people to share information. PACS systems that are in the cloud and tools for electronic health records (EHRs) work well together. This means that imaging reports, information about the patient, and other important information can be sent immediately. It is easy to document things now that they are tied together. This also helps people stay on treatment longer and makes administrative work easy.

Case studies show how cloud-based PACS is used at work.

Here are two real-life examples of how Cloud PACS can help imaging professionals work together:

A health care network with more than one location is an example:

A group of hospitals and clinics in a large healthcare network wanted to make it easy for all of them to work together on projects and speed up the radiology process. After putting Cloud PACS on all of its computers, the business saw the following:

  • Because medical images and data are easier to get to from anywhere, radiologists and doctors can work together on patients faster.
  • It is now possible to diagnose and treat people faster because it takes less time to look at and report images.
  • The care for patients was better because experts, radiology offices, and doctors who sent patients were able to talk to each other and work together better.

The option was both scalable and affordable, and it let the business meet its growing imaging needs without having to spend a lot of money on new equipment at the beginning.

The second case study is about telemedicine, which means doctor visits that happen over the phone.

It was hard for a rural health care center that helped people from outlying places get specialized radiology services and talk to experts who weren’t based there. The placel was able to do the following with the help of cloud-based PACS and telemedicine:

  • Patients could cut down on the time they spent going to the doctor by being able to have talks with doctors from afar.
  • Better testing services that are easy to get to help doctors choose treatments faster and get better results for their patients.
  • Better contact between healthcare workers on-site and specialists in other places so that knowledge can be shared and skills can be taught.

The healthcare company and the patients both saved money because the saved time on multiple visits was reduced.

Final Words

PACS, which stands for “cloud-based picture archiving and communication systems,” are a big step forward in the field of imaging. There are many ways that they make it easy for doctors to work together. With cloud-based patient-centered medical information tools, clinicians, radiologists, and other stakeholders can give better care to patients more quickly and easily. These systems let people work together from afar, remotely, and in real time. They are also scalable, secure, and can connect to electronic health record systems. Cloud PACS will become an even more important tool in the healthcare industry for coming up with new ideas, making work go more smoothly, and better patient outcomes.