Challenge

A major academic hospital in Boston with more than 700 beds that provides remote diagnostic image study interpretations to more than 15 regional hospitals and imaging centers in Massachusetts was faced with a scalability issue in its teleradiology services. The hospital’s existing PACS and VPN-based remote delivery solution had become unwieldy, costing too much in delays and performance, and limiting the expansion of their critical day and nighttime teleradiology offerings. For this teaching hospital, these limitations became further compounded when they internally migrated to a different PACS. It was faced with the need to maintain a legacy application exclusively to receive studies from remote clients. Additionally, as regional centers deployed their own PACS systems, the entire community was confronted with the need to maintain a legacy application for the sole purpose of exchanging studies with the teaching hospital in Boston. Added to the delays and performance costs were the issues of maintaining and paying for a sub-par solution, which made the hospital’s partners further dissatisfied.

Solution

This hospital turned to AG Mednet, the world’s largest diagnostic imaging exchange network that enables the lossless transfer of diagnostic images studies from any PACS or modality, to any other PACS or reading workstation. AG Mednet’s network provides the reliable and flexible delivery of images, and access requires no capital investment on the part of subscribing institutions. Furthermore, with 24/7/365 monitoring and technical support, hospitals on the network can always be sure that their studies will arrive in the most efficient manner to their destination. AG Mednet has provided this premier Boston hospital and all its partners a flexible solution that enables each to work with their preferred PACS and modalities, while having a straightforward ability to exchange studies at anytime, with minimum maintenance, no capital investment and low operating costs. With diagnostic studies flowing from remote locations directly into the hospital’s multiple PACS, the 30- minute response time level of service prescribed in their contracts can be easily met, thus maintaining and improving on patient care across the entire region.

Result

After exhaustive trials in which three of the hospital’s 15 partner locations sent all studies through AG Mednet, the entire community migrated away from its legacy PACS-based transfer application onto the AG Mednet network. The complete migration took fewer than six weeks, with an average deployment time per hospital of one day or less. The central provider of quality interpretations in Boston is now preparing to add additional clients in the form of Tier-2 and Tier-3 hospitals and imaging centers, both in Massachusetts and in other states. This growth in business comes without a growth in overhead, and new clients can be up on the network and sending studies within days of contracts being completed.