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SCAR creates a 'roll up your sleeves' atmosphere conducive to practical PACS
By: Cynthia E. Keen
The value and strength of SCAR's annual meeting are that it provides a venue for presenting innovative ideas vendors can act on and for dispensing pragmatic advice.
Several years ago, the society made a decision to emphasize explicit "how to" and "don't do" details about implementing and managing a digital imaging initiative. SCAR University, which offers beginning to advanced levels of topical instruction, is a result of that decision. In addition, many of the scientific sessions are structured for information sharing.
The annual SCAR meeting attracts an audience of leaders, doers, and wannabe converts focused on revolutionizing the way diagnostic imaging departments and imaging centers operate. The sharing of ideas that takes place each year is remarkable and refreshing.
This is not a conference for research presentations that don't relate to the rank and file. Highly technical presentations are made at other venues. SCAR creates a "roll up your sleeves and get to work" atmosphere that makes PACS happen. But now the focus is on making PACS happen better. This attitude frequently turns members of last year's audience into next year's speakers.
The meeting delivers nuggets of knowledge exceptionally well, through SCAR U, in conversations during a lunch break, at vendors' booths, or in scientific sessions. Here's a sampling:
- The DICOM Part 14 gray-scale display function should be used to calibrate quality-control devices, soft-copy displays, and hard copy (film, CDs, DVDs, or paper prints). Images will be consistent and life for all will be easier. Charles Willis, Ph.D., Texas Children's Hospital.
- Peer-review processes can be managed electronically and integrated into a PACS by judiciously using comment fields and key words. Dr. Matthew Ralston, Maine Medical Center.
- Data migration from one PACS to another can be facilitated with the addition of a temporary RAID cache and specialized software. The software prefetches relevant priors from the old archive and retains them in a RAID cache for access by the new PACS. This costs a fraction of what a complete data transfer initiative would cost, especially since requests decline significantly as prior examinations age. Images should be stored in both old and new archives for a 60 to 90-day period prior to implementing the new PACS, to prevent network overload from excessive image fetching. Dr. Barton Branstetter, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
- A PACS training program, mandatory for all new employees, can include games, role playing, and a scavenger hunt to identify PACS equipment in the workplace. Providing CME credit for the two-hour session doesn't hurt either, to maintain interest and enthusiasm and develop a good feeling about PACS. Maria Blado, Texas Children's Hospital.
- The use of electronic signatures can accelerate report turnaround by up to 50% for examinations that have a high volume of similar outcomes and structured reporting. This provides a partial solution when physicians resist speech recognition, or funds do not exist to implement it. Dr. Luigi Lepanto, Centre Hopitalier de l'Universite de Montreal.
The old guard-the visionary radiologists, engineers, and physicists who recognized in the 1970s the potential of harnessing computers for radiology-are retiring. The next wave of SCAR leadership consists of the pioneering academics who took the PACS plunge. Now that PACS is a reality, input is needed from community hospital and private-practice radiologists and from radiology residents, who will know only soft-copy images.
PACS products evolve from the collective experiences of users, and the voice of the average user is important. Residents and private-practice radiologists were not much in evidence at this year's meeting, but they need to be.
The Vancouver, British Columbia, venue for SCAR 2004 is expected to attract a large Canadian audience. This provides an exciting opportunity for Canadian healthcare officials to share the impact of PACS within a socialized medicine environment.
MS. KEEN (itcommckeen@earthlink.net) is a PACS consultant with i.t. Communications.
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