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Sectra RIS/PACS Replacement Best Practices

Key Considerations When Replacing a RIS/PACS

A RIS/PACS replacement can be a complex undertaking. When you get to the point of new system selection, you have to consider more than just the technology. Vendor reliability, data migration and integration expertise, and proven change management and implementation processes are extremely important as well. Challenges in these areas can be the key reasons why a project gets extended well past its deadline. The following information includes key points to consider and best practice advice when it comes to replacing your RIS/PACS.

System Replacement Justification

RIS/PACS replacement cost justification needs to include more than just licenses and hardware. An ROI over the investment's lifetime should be done that also includes the solution’s uptime, ability to scale, frequency and complexity of upgrades and the vendor’s approach to training and support. View our webinar on "Justifying RIS Replacement" for ROI guidance.

Data Migration

Migrating data from legacy systems is one of the critical points in switching a RIS/PACS. The vendor should provide the guidance to help you make the right decisions. Some key questions to consider: Is there data from other hospitals? Is there a RIS feeding information? Is there old data and has it been through previous migrations? Which data needs to be migrated? Are all your data types supported in the new system, e.g. structured reports, word documents, PDF, RTF etc?

Best practice tips:

During the selection process, validate the vendor’s references for the exact migration being performed – not all migrations are equal, and experience is everything.
In your negotiations retain some leverage through penalty or exit clauses in case the vendor is overly optimistic in their migration completion time estimates.
Use the migration event as a reason to do house-keeping with the data itself – clean out information no longer needed or required, and perform reconciliation against the patient demographics master index.
Try to combine several archives into a larger one with more information.
Make sure the vendor provides a quick exit strategy for the data in case their solution is not the final stop for your data.
Ensure the vendor uses methodologies that make it easy for users and patients. For example, utilizing intelligent pre-fetching and data loading based on ad-hoc or planned events, such as appointments or walk-ins. Additionally, the act of pre-loading static data during installation can greatly soften the impact of a migration.

Sectra has helped multi-site hospitals, imaging centers and entire country regions make the transition from their aging technology to our future-proof RIS/PACS platform due to our proven methodologies. Based on careful data analysis Sectra sets up a strategy for preloading data in combination with on-the-fly migrations to make each data migration as easy as possible for our customers.

Integration

Integration often sounds easy when discussed in the sales process, but don’t underestimate the challenges it can bring about. RIS/PACS vendor capabilities and experience should cover integration to modalities, other IT systems and third-party applications. Good integration results in an efficient workflow by providing users with immediate access to key information while also making it easy for the IT department to manage. Below, we list best practice tips for healthcare IT integrations:

Documentation: Create clear, comprehensive and highly detailed documentation of the enterprise workflow.
Standards: Choose standards-based integration over proprietary integration when possible.
Test Environment: Scrupulously maintain a complete integrated test environment using live data.
Test Plans: Generate test plans for all integrated systems based on the workflow documentation.
Vendor Management: Coordinate changes with vendors from all affected systems in advance.
Version Control: Implement a version control system to manage changes.

Sectra understands that working within the complexity of healthcare integration requires specialized IT and troubleshooting skills, a comprehensive understanding of enterprise data flows, and clear and thorough documentation.

Implementation

Regardless of the system, these implementation best practice tips can help your organization experience a smooth implementation process.

Organize a team of stakeholders. Your team should be comprised of a least one member of each functional area/department that will be using the new system. This should include a dedicated internal project manager.
Review the project plan with your team and vendor. Review the details of the vendor’s plan and contract before you start the project to help minimize risks. Do you agree with the project plan and timeframes? Understand the requirements and build in enough time for staff to complete their assigned tasks.
Over communicate. Make sure that everyone in the organization knows you are changing systems and how it will impact them. Get people excited about the change. Don’t let it be a surprise to anyone.
Ensure hardware compatibility. If you are using existing hardware make sure it is compatible with the new equipment you are purchasing. For example, your new document scanners require Windows 7, but your operating system on the existing workstations only supports Windows XP. Read More...

Disaster Recovery

PACS is a life-critical IT system. Without it, operations cannot be preplanned, images cannot be read, prior images cannot be retrieved, etc. In other words, you need to have a disaster recovery plan as well as a business continuity plan in place, and include this in your switching cost calculations.

Determine the level of disaster recovery you need. Building for total redundancy is indeed possible, but it comes at a cost. Some points to consider when determining your requirements include the following:

How much downtime can you afford in case of an emergency: two minutes, two hours or two days?
How much data do you need to work through the disaster? Is it enough to have the system up and running again, or do you need access to all priors? The answer will differ greatly between hospitals and so will the costs. Obviously building for redundancy within a single data center is a very different task compared to having several data centers that function as a backup for each other.

Also, to ensure that you have the disaster preparedness you need, be very specific in the requirements you give your vendor. For example, simply requesting that your vendor supplies you with 99.95% uptime can mean that your PACS is down 4 hours 23 minutes a year, 22 minutes every month, or 43 seconds every day. Is this acceptable to you?

Vendor Evaluation

Even though there are many criteria behind choosing a vendor, at the end of the day it’s about trust. Trust in the vendor, trust in their products and trust in their people to deliver and support you well after the implementation.

By selecting a vendor that is experienced and has good processes to manage integration, data migration, change management, training and support you can experience a smooth replacement and peace-of-mind that comes from vendor reliability.

Sectra has more than 20 years of experience in delivering, implementing and servicing complex radiology IT solutions in hospitals and imaging centers of all sizes with all types of needs. Our project methodology has been developed over more than 1,100 customer projects. Some of the world’s largest healthcare organizations put trust in our competence. Learn more about Sectra.