Where better solutions come out of storage                     

Comport Consulting works with a number of software partners to bring total solutions to the healthcare provider segment, but none is more integral to solving our customers top concerns than the DICOM Services Grid and Vendor Neutral Archive powered by Acuo Technologies.  The DICOM Services Grid is an advanced image management software solution which facilitates an open DICOM infrastructure for any PACS environment.

Acuo DICOM Services Grid brokers communication between single and multiple PACS vendors, modalities, and other systems allowing GOOGLE like searches across imaging data files to produce all relevant studies and reports for patient inquiries.

The DICOM Services Grid is built on a services oriented architecture that can aggregate/federate DICOM objects and query results, as well as virtualize and replicate storage assets.  It is built on a collaborative and extensible grid computing model to create an accurate, complete view of patient information from data dispersed across multiple facilities, application systems and databases to deliver a comprehensive picture of each patient in real time at all points of service.

This Vendor Neutral Infrastructure does not require proprietary software/hardware solutions, but instead provides IHE consistent solutions, such as intelligent DICOM routing.  It integrates disparate PACS, modalities, workstations and other DICOM entities through DICOM/HL7, IHE Profiles, etc.  Because it translates all major PACS to the published DICOM standard, it eliminates costly, time consuming downstream image data migration issues.

The DICOM Services Grid is a multi-site/distributed set of networked nodes which virtualizes DICOM, IHE, HL7, storage assets, and image management databases (metadata).  These virtualized application services are available to all users of the Grid over standard IP connections…it utilizes your existing network very efficiently.  Every DICOM Services Grid Node sits in the network and routes data between multiple modality systems, 3rd Party PACS, workstations, storage subsystems and other DICOM Services Grid™ Nodes

Workflow is tightly integrated at each node so that the healthcare enterprise can create Clinical Policies or Business Rules to manage the distribution, retention and protection levels by patient, study type, referring physician, etc.  The node also controls Image Movement, Compression, Encryption, Prefetching, Caching, or Permanent Storage allocations.

The Business Impact of implementing this vendor neutral infrastructure is:

·          Avoid Migration due to change of PACS, Infrastructure or upgrades

·          Legacy PACS investment protection:  no need to migrate studies until they are needed.

·          The solution is vendor agnostic for both PACS and IT infrastructure like physical storage devices.

·          It supports new archiving and storage technologies like HP MAS, Bycast Storage Grids and EMC Centera.

·          You will achieve a network buyback through load optimization, pre-fetching, compression, throttling and multi-point routing capabilities.

·          It delivers centralized and/or decentralized interoperability for distributed operations like RHIOs and IDNs.

·          Significant cost reduction through ability to share archive(s) with all PACS systems.

·          The Vendor Neutral Infrastructure has business continuity and high availability built in.

·          It provides one standards based logical archive that is the single location to retrieve the images regardless of the viewer.  The Acuo archive gives IT the flexibility to add or replace viewers as their needs change and not be locked in by the PACS vendor or the competitive archive vendors that have their Own viewer. 

Last modified: 01/21/09