Abstract

The purpose of an IT industry standard is to:

Improve interoperability between disparate systems
Lower system integration costs
Reduce the work effort required to implement software from different vendors
Improve IT workflow

Wikipedia defines DICOM as follows:

Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is a standard for handling, storing, printing, and transmitting information in medical imaging. There is no doubt about the merits of DICOM compliance for healthcare enterprises and imaging technology vendors alike. Without DICOM, it would be difficult to envision the interoperability chaos that would be present in the medical imaging IT market. Having DICOM (and IHE) have made interoperability among PACS, post-processing software and modality software more efficient and more cost effective.

Why then are PACS administrators constantly challenged with complex interoperability issues? The reality is that, more often than not, image files are held captive by a vendor’s interpretation of the DICOM standard or a healthcare organization’s unique definitions held in the file metadata. The goal of this white paper is to explore the root causes of these DICOM challenges and examine the evidence behind the growing trend for PACS-neutral solutions.

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