Top performing radiology IT solutions in the 2022 Best in KLAS rankings

KLAS Research, a healthcare information technology market research firm, has released its 2022 Best in KLAS report, which includes sections for radiology on PACS, speech recognition, universal viewers, image exchange software and vendor neutral archives.

KLAS reports try to find the true story of what is happening with every vendor solution by interviewing clinicians who are the product end-users. KLAS said the report is not a perfect sample size and does not include all vendors, but offers hospitals a much larger group of references than a traditional reference check of a couple customers from a vendor’s reference list. The research allows providers and payers to hear frank comments from install sites. The report covers more than 1,000 health informatics solutions used across health systems.

Best performing large health system PACS 

In the PACS product category for large healthcare centers with more than 300,000 studies per year, the Best in KLAS product was Sectra. The list in order of overall performance score:
   • Sectra PACS, 88.5
   • Fujifilm Synapse, 84.4
   • IBM Watson Health Merge PACS, 82.3
   • Change Healthcare Radiology Solutions, 80.5
   • GE Healthcare Centricity PACS, 58.6

While these vendors remained mostly stable in their scores over 2021, the noticeable exception was a 10% increase in performance by Fujifilm Synapse.

Sectra users said they would buy the product again and 100% said they have long-term plans with this vendor. Fujifilm also scored well for being included in long term plans. IBM Watson Health was listed as very likely to be included in both long-term plans and purchased again in the future.

KLAS gathered information on six other PACS in this category, but did not have enough data for an apples-to-apples comparison with the other vendors. These included:

• Infinitt PACS, 88
• Philips Vue PACS (Carestream), 79
• Intelerad IntelePACS (mostly imaging centers), 78.8
• Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging for Radiology, 73.9
• Agfa HealthCare IMPAX, 73.8
• Philips IntelliSpace PACS, 66.2

In the KLAS report Imaging in the Cloud 2021, there were four key trends identified in this market:

1. Fujifilm and Infinitt led in successfully moving small to midsized organizations to a cloud-based PACS environment.

2. Philips and IBM Watson Health made strides in cloud imaging adoption, but with some bumps along the way.

3. Cloud PACS production was primarily done by smaller organizations. IBM Watson Health and Sectra were validated for larger volumes.

4. The market is making the transition to imaging in the cloud.

Best performing small health system PACS 

The small PACS market is classified as healthcare organizations with less than 300,000 studies per year. The Best in KLAS product was Sectra. The vendor's users all said they would buy the product again and all expected to include Sectra in their long-term plans.

The list of all vendors included in interviews in order of overall performance scores:

• Sectra PACS, 92.8
• Novarad NovaPACS, 87.9
• Philips Vue PACS (Carestream), 87.1
• Infinitt PACS, 85.2
• Fujifilm Synapse, 81.8
• Change Healthcare Radiology Solutions, 81.6
• IBM Watson Health Merge PACS, 78.4
• Intelerad IntelePACS (mostly imaging centers), 74.2
• GE Healthcare Centricity PACS, 70.9

Three other PACS were mentioned, but not included in the overall rankings because KLAS did not have enough information. These included:

• PaxeraHealth PaxeraUltima (used as a component), 89.7
• Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging for Radiology, 78.5
• Philips IntelliSpace (not used as a primary system), 75.4

Speech recognition software for radiology

All three radiology speech recognition platforms included in the KLAS review scored very well. 3M MModal Fluency for Imaging was the Best in KLAS product. Users of the Dolbey solution said the vendor kept all promises made, and their organizations plan to include the vendor in future plans. 

The vendors overall performance scores were:

• 3M MModal Fluency for Imaging, 89  
• Dolbey Fusion Expert, 88.7
• Nuance PowerScribe 360/One, 86.9

The top medical imaging universal viewers

Philips Healthcare earned the Best in KLAS for universal viewers used in radiology. The overall rankings from end-users were:

• Philips Vue Motion (Carestream), 86
• Mach7 Technologies eUnity, 85.3
• IBM Watson Health IBM iConnect Access, 85.2
• Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging Xero Viewer, 83.2
• GE Healthcare Universal Viewer, 72.8

KLAS said 95% of clinicians interviewed said they would purchase the Mach7 Technologies product again. 

Two other vendors were not ranked because of limited data, including:

• Visage Imaging Visage 7, 88.8
• Hyland NilRead, 82.1

In KLAS' Enterprise Imaging 2021 report, one of the key findings was Visage had the highest proportion of customers using diagnostic viewers. The report also found Hyland was validated for the most service-line connections, with most of these being for referring physicians.