CHAPTER 3 What Can an HCM System Do that Other Systems Can’t? 35
the HCM strategy is not just about all image data, but all medical data. For application
in HCM, a viewer has to be capable of displaying the data of all modalities
that generate medical data. Beside tools for image manipulation, it must also have
tools for document display; for example, to easily navigate and browse through a
single document or through several documents. Furthermore, a case
by-case – and/
or patient-related display as well as a classification-based search must be possible.
It gets really exciting when the user can make adjustments directly
within the viewer, e.g. in case of assignment errors or errors in the
documents
themselves. From today’s perspective, universal viewers
do not offer this function because they only allow access to read, not
to write to the original data.
Those who already have a universal viewer in use today can continue using it as
an image viewing component in an HIS for the first steps towards an HCM system,
but it is not suitable for a fully deployed HCM system.
Picture Archiving and Communication System
(PACS)
Looking at digitalization in medicine, radiology has been a first mover. As one
of the first disciplines to offer digital data and IT systems for the management of
digital
data, radiologists, after decades of optimization, now use an IT infrastructure
that perfectly addresses their needs and workflows, as well as processing and
archiving processes. Today the PACS is a software free of the teething troubles
that no radiologist will ever miss. To get it straight out of the way: the PACS cannot
be replaced by the HCM system. The solutions for processing, managing and
evaluating radiological data are too specialized and powerful.
Is it conversely possible that the PACS could become the nucleus of the HCM system
due to well-optimized processes, functional strength and excellent handling
of large amounts of data? Only with significant further development! First of all,
the PACS classifies data by examinations, not by case and/or patients, and does
not store documents and signal data. Therefore the PACS lacks essential features
that are required by an HCM system.
Archiving and distribution of images outside of radiology can be handled by
both PACS and HCM. In the full configuration of the HCM system the image
distribution is integrated in the patient- and case-centered multi-format
viewer. For reasons of uniformity and efficiency, the HCM system also archives
the image data.