For physicians who work in urgent care, podiatry, chiropractic offices, and imaging centers as well as veterinarians and dentists, having the hardware and software you need in place to help you get the patient information you need for accurate diagnoses is fundamental to providing good patient care. By making an investment in a PACS radiology system, you are making an investment in providing quality health care for your patients, as well as improving your busy hospital or medical facility's productivity.

A PACS system allows you to view, distribute and archive the many digital medical images that you take throughout the course of your workday. PACS systems are designed to work well with a variety of image capture modalities, so that all of those different units, each of which produces digital images in the DICOM medical imaging format, can be read by a PACS system, regardless of vendor brands. Because DICOM is the common computer language among all of them, it enables flexible use with a variety of modalities as well as other parts of the radiology imaging system.

PACS radiology systems are also designed for the viewing of digital x-rays on PACS monitors. The monitors, which are high-resolution, medical grade monitors, are used in conjunction with the PACS system to allow for the editing of the digital x-rays. Functions such as crop, rotate, as well as changes to brightness and contrast are all possible using the software system, the results of which can be viewed on the monitor. All of this was completely impossible to achieve in seconds by using film x-ray systems, which is why many medical facilities have made the switch to digital imaging systems.

PACS systems also help to keep your medical office in compliance with current HIPPA rules. These regulations have stipulations that patient medical records must be stored, or archived, for up to seven years, and that a strategy must be in place for effective disaster recovery. The PACS appliance can help with both crucial endeavors, because digital images may be stored on CDs and DVDs, hard copies may be printed for storage, or storage can take place on a hard drive or on a server. If you set the system to automatically take care of routing the digital images to the appropriate storage areas, this saves time and helps you to maintain compliance. Off-site archives also mean that you will have the information you need, regardless of area of specialization, should disaster recovery be needed.