An open strategy for implementing PACS and its primary application.

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Health Information Systems
• Digital Health

Background:

• Current hospital-oriented Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) in China hinder inter-hospital patient data transfer and image sharing.
• This limitation restricts access to medical information and expertise, impacting comprehensive patient care and resource utilization.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present and evaluate a novel, patient-oriented strategy for PACS implementation in China.
• To address the challenges of data fragmentation and limited resource sharing inherent in traditional hospital-centric PACS models.

Main Methods:

• Development of an open, internet-based PACS strategy connecting multiple hospitals via an image center.
• Implementation of a patient-oriented mechanism for image archiving and case information management.
• Pilot application and evaluation of the open PACS strategy in a real-world setting in China.

Main Results:

• The patient-oriented strategy facilitates seamless transfer of patient images and case information among healthcare providers.
• It enables effective sharing of specialized medical expertise, benefiting a wider patient population.
• The system demonstrated enhanced security, authenticity, and validity of patient data compared to previous methods.

Conclusions:

• The proposed open, patient-oriented PACS strategy effectively overcomes the limitations of traditional hospital-centric systems.
• This approach expands PACS applicability from large institutions to smaller hospitals, accelerating the development of digital healthcare infrastructure in China.
• The strategy improves data accessibility, resource sharing, and data security in medical imaging and information management.