The radiology community is struggling mightily to deliver high-quality patient care despite shrinking budgets and a chronic shortage of radiologists. One consequence is that organizations are seeking synergies by connecting several enterprises under one umbrella.

But before we can even begin to find long-term solutions to daunting demographic trends and the endless demands to get more done with less, we need to get the basic meaning of key words straight. Two fundamental terms to understand when discussing a wide area radiology solution are archiving and sharing. The distinction between these two terms shouldn’t be underestimated, but unfortunately, they’re often confused and several vendors that actually offer an archive sell it as a sharing solution.

Archiving is the long-term storage of images and is not sufficient to manage the clinical workflow of sharing complete patient histories across units and enterprises. Archiving deals only with images, whereas a sharing solution handles the full RIS and PACS data, including reports and clinical documents.

Furthermore, in an archiving solution, what was stored is exactly what can be retrieved. There is no way to deal with alterations to images or patient information in a cross-enterprise scenario. However, a sharing solution provides the possibility of allowing shared images to remain with the provider. That way, duplication and consistency are not an issue.

Despite this clear distinction, medical IT vendors often overlook differences between archiving and sharing. The suggestion may be to use an archiving solution where there really is a sharing need, “solving” the workflow with a series of integrations that are neither cost-effective nor future-proof.  In order to receive a cost-effective and future-proof solution, our advice is to make sure your vendor supports the standards for sharing, such as IHE XDS-I. You should also ask for a sharing solution with a unified user experience, where all shared data is accessed as if it were a single local system.

Having familiarized yourself with the differences between archiving and sharing, perhaps the best way to do your colleagues a favor at this point would be to share this article rather than archive it?

White paper – Is PACS a commodity?
Archiving vs. sharing is one of the challenges discussed in the white paper “Is PACS a commodity?”  You can also follow our discussion on how a future-proof PACS vendor should handle the data boom and how they can support you with continuous improvements. Read the full white paper>>

Wide area radiology Dr. Claes Lundström, PACS trends, Sectra PACS, White Paper, Wide area radiology