Short history of PACS (Part II: Europe)

Although the concept of picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) was developed in Europe during the latter part of the 1970s, no working system was completed at that time. The first PACS implementations took place in the United States in the early 1980s, e.g. at Pennsylvania University, UCLA, and Kansas City University. Some more or less successful PACS developments also took place in Europe in the 1980s, particularly in the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Scandinavia, and Germany. Most systems could be characterized by their focus on a single department, such as radiology or nuclear medicine. European hospital-wide PACS with high visibility evolved in the early 1990s in London (Hammersmith Hospital) and Vienna (SMZO). These were followed during the latter part of the 1990s by approximately 10-20 PACS installations in each of the major industrialized countries of Europe. Wide-area PACS covering several health care institutions in a region are now in the process of being implemented in a number of European countries. Because of limitations of space some countries, for example, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Greece, as well as Eastern European countries, etc. could not be appropriately represented in this paper.