HOME BIBLIOGRAPHY CLIENTS CONSULTING SERVICES CONTACT PERSONAL PROFILE PRODUCTS RESOURCES WELCOME Upgrading Department PACS with Entry-Level Vendor Neutral Archive Components NOVEMBER 12, 2013 Organizations that appreciate the benefits that the Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) will bring to the organization, sometimes find it difficult to finance the complete VNA solution in a single budget cycle. It is most unfortunate if the decision comes down to deploying none of the solution, due to a lack of funding for all of the solution. In my opinion, continued investment in a proprietary Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) archive and the continued accumulation of proprietary data is a flawed strategy. In a paper sponsored by an unrestricted grant from IBM Systems and Technology I propose an alternative to the full VNA deployment, and discuss an affordable entry-level phase to a multi-phase VNA deployment strategy. Any IT initiative that is focused on an upgrade to a department PACS storage solution, a refresh of the existing storage solution or a replacement of the disaster recovery (DR) storage solution initiated by an end of life letter, is an opportunity to carefully consider the value to the organization in continuing the proprietary PACS archive paradigm. Migrating the image data from the PACS to a properly configured entry-level VNA is the organization’s opportunity to once and for all normalize its image data and end the cycle of expensive and time-consuming data migrations that are required with every PACS replacement project. The hardware agnostic, entry-level VNA gives the organization the opportunity to apply advanced storage technology to all of its data management applications. All of these benefits can be realized at a fraction of the cost of a fully configured VNA, and in many instances for a price very close to that being quoted for the proprietary PACS archive solution. CATEGORIES: PACS PACS OPTIMIZATION PACS-NEUTRAL ARCHIVE STRATEGIC PLANNING ©2016 Gray Consulting