InDex delivers exceptional speed, quality, security, ease of use, flexibility, redundancy, and scalability. InDex provides immediate online storage over the hospital's network as well as permanent nearline storage offsite at InSiteOne's digital warehouse. Additionally, a disaster recovery copy is stored offsite at a third location for added protection. Plus, each image must be archived for a minimum of five years and indefinitely in certain instances. The rapid shift toward filmless digital radiology presents a growing need for hospitals and medical groups to modernize their radiological systems.
Radiology contributes significantly to hospital revenue.
A Modern Healthcare survey found that 56 percent of hospitals identify radiology as their number one source of revenue. While the motivation is compelling, the transition to digital imaging is a difficult task requiring expensive equipment, management and training at a time when hospitals are faced with unrelenting pressure to increase efficiency and lower costs. A PACS integrates with a medical imaging modality, such as a CT or MRI, and provides the ability to accept key patient and study information, associate this information with sets of images, and then transmit both the images and related information to an on-site storage device with archival and retrieval capabilities. While a PACS reduces the costs of film-based imaging, the biggest challenge is economical storage and archiving which requires intensive internal management and can strain hospital IT resources. Fewer than 25 hospitals nationwide currently have department-wide PACS capabilities, but most hospitals do have some digital output, usually from their CT and MRI equipment.