New Picture Archiving System (PACS)

NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) Information Technology and the Department of Radiology will launch a new picture archiving communication system (PACS) this month.

PACS is a medical imaging technology which provides storage of and access to all imaging produced in radiology departments, including scans from MRI, CT, X-ray, ultrasound, and PET.

The Philips IntelliSpace PACS will replace the four standalone PACS environments that are currently available—giving physicians, patients, and staff across the NYP enterprise access to all imaging by logging into one standardized system.

“There's really been an evolution and revolution in imaging and we needed a new platform with which we could integrate all these advances,” said Lawrence Schwartz, MD, chair of the Department of Radiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). “This will set us up for the future and beyond.”

The state-of-the-art system will have advantages for ordering physicians, radiologists, and patients.  A new and updated set of features include an improved ability to compare images and look historically at patients’ previous imaging, 3D viewing and manipulation capabilities, and—coming soon—a collaboration feature that will allow referring physicians and radiologists to conference while looking at the same image on different screens.

Patients will be able to see providers at Columbia, Cornell, and NYP and know that all their imaging studies are easily accessible, regardless of where in our health system they were performed.

“The move to Philips is an exciting project as it will modernize our PACS and allow the radiologist to leverage artificial intelligence and advanced visualization toolsets,” said Michael Kennedy, director of information systems for cardiology, radiology and radiation oncology at NYP. “It will also provide benefits to our clinicians and patients as they will now have access to images and studies from across the enterprise.”

The new PACS will be fully integrated with Epic—the enterprise-wide electronic medical record—when it goes live in January, 2020, at CUIMC.

Phase I of the new PACS will be implemented on September 15, 2019, at CUIMC, NYP Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, NYP Allen Hospital, NYP Lawrence Hospital, and ColumbiaDoctors. The IT team will be onsite for the entire go-live event to support radiology and clinical staff.