Despite years of vendor announcements and market rhetoric about the virtues of a solution that combines PACS and RIS technology, few vendors have delivered an integrated, full-featured RIS/PACS, according to a report from market research firm KLAS. KLAS also ranks current RIS vendors based on surveys collected from providers.

In the report, The Revival of RIS, KLAS profiles the renewed interest among healthcare providers in RIS technology and looks at the efforts of several major healthcare IT companies to deliver a combined RIS/PACS offering. This would blend the imaging capacity of a PACS product with the patent-centric workflow and reporting available in the RIS. Among other findings, the report concluded that few vendors today are providing a truly integrated solution.

The new report also underscored a renewed interest in the RIS, as more healthcare providers embrace a patient-centric approach to medical imaging. Now that many hospitals and imaging centers have settled on a PACS strategy, the modernization of the RIS has become a priority. Providers are looking to the workflow and reporting capabilities of RIS products to be elements in an enterprise-wide imaging strategy.

“Though the advent of PACS solutions has dramatically increased the volume of images facilities can manage, hospitals have realized that PACS is not the complete workflow driver originally hoped for,” Brown said. “Imaging studies are not complete without the corresponding reports, which are traditionally pulled by the RIS. Plus, the RIS is also tasked with the operational aspects of running the imaging department, which is outside the scope of a PACS solution.”

“Ultimately, our research shows that more hospitals are moving towards a patient- and RIS-driven workflow in imaging, and away from of an image- and PACS-driven workflow,” he said.

Courtesy of HealthImaging.com