ROCHESTER, N.Y., Jan. 8 — Carestream has been awarded a multimillion-dollar healthcare IT contract for Veterans Affairs hospitals in the Pacific Northwest region, which includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and parts of Montana. Carestream will install its Clinical Collaboration Platform (see video link) throughout VISN 20 healthcare facilities. The implementation of Carestream’s enterprise imaging platform (including Vue PACS, Vue Motion and Vue Archive) will help unify imaging and simplify medical image management.

The idea of implementing a “deconstructed PACS”—using multiple vendors for key solutions such as your PACS, VNA and viewers—was gaining huge momentum among imaging providers as recently as a few years ago. Now, however, providers are moving away from a best-of-breed approach to its imaging solutions and embracing a single-source approach.

Stamford, Conn.—FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A., Inc., a leading provider of Medical Informatics and Enterprise Imaging solutions, today announced that its Synapse 5 PACS has been granted a Risk Management Framework-based (RMF) Authority to Operate (ATO) on U.S. DoD networks. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) awarded the ATO after a rigorous 14-month process assessing Fujifilm’s comprehensive technology and evaluating Synapse 5 PACS under specific security and privacy controls outlined in the RMF.

Agfa HealthCare announces today that it has collaborated in delivering a system-wide DoseMonitor automated software implementation, integrated with their IMPAX platform, to the Veterans Integrated Service Networks 19 (VISN 19). Contracts for DoseMonitor have already been awarded by VISN 21 and VISN 23.

Mercy Technology Services, the Mercy health system's IT division, has announced the launch of its new PACS imaging solution. The solution is set to include an enterprise viewer, VNA, speech recognition and reporting capabilities and more.

When UC San Diego Health introduced its expanded Comprehensive Breast Health Center this spring, Haydee Ojeda-Fournier, MD, medical director of breast imaging, got right to the point for the press covering the development. She emphasized that the informal reopening had doubled the capacity of an existing program and that the center now houses an integrated suite of numerous advanced-imaging technologies all under one roof.

The adoption of PACS technology has been incredibly important for radiology, according to a new study published in the Journal of Digital Imaging, helping the specialty become largely filmless while improving workflow, efficiency and productivity. However, the authors noted, this current generation of PACS has numerous limitations.

What do you hope to get out of your facility’s PACS? Lightning-fast speed? The latest and greatest features?