Advances in medical imaging technology have resulted in medical professionals finding diseases much earlier than ever before. The new generation of imaging quality is allowing patients to live much longer with early diagnosis of conditions that would have been very serious or even terminal in the past. The success of the technology has meant a large number of images being taken by patients around the world. Storing all of the images requires an archival system capable of handling the images so they can be accessed when needed while at the same time protecting them with the best available security protocol.
According to Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (GIA), publisher of off-the-shelf market research, the Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) market is expected to reach $6.1 billion by 2018. The market is being driven by compliance regulation by governments to implement IT in the healthcare industry and the overall improvement of image capturing and reading techniques. An aging population and higher rates of co-morbid conditions such as diabetes and obesity have also increased the demand for medical imaging.
The implementation of IT in healthcare is necessary to introduce efficiency to what has been a very inefficient system, costing countries around the world a considerable portion of their GDP.
With PACS and radiology information systems (RIS) a trend towards digitization has resulted in a better archiving methodology for storing, viewing, sharing and retrieval of this information. The PACS and RIS are chosen as one of the best healthcare IT solution to improve the efficiency and productivity of healthcare workflow.
Some of the new technologies used by PACS include 3D visualization, maximum intensity projections (MIP), multiplanar reformations (MPR), visualization tools, voice recognition solutions, customized worklists, teleradiology, cloud-based PACS, zero-footprint viewers, and mobile PACS.
The biggest players in the industry highlighted in the report include: Agfa Healthcare NV, Aspyra LLC, BRIT Systems Inc., Carestream Health Inc., Cerner Corporation, DR Systems Inc., Fujifilm Medical Systems U.S.A. Inc., GE Healthcare, INFINITT Healthcare Co. Ltd., Intelerad Medical Systems Inc., McKesson Corporation, Merge Healthcare Inc., Philips Healthcare, Rogan-delft B.V., Sectra AB, and Siemens Healthcare, and others.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
