COVID-19 spurs deployment of at-home PACS

Photo credit – BARCO, Inc.

PARCA eNews – June 20, 2020 – With the pandemic reaching into the southeast part of the US, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System made the decision to implement widespread remote radiology, in part to protect its radiologists.

Srini Tridandapani and colleagues at UAB’s Radiology Department successfully deployed more than two dozen at-home radiology workstations within a couple of weeks time. The group recounted their experience in the May 20 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.
Before the pandemic, Tridandapani’s department had avoided remote imaging readings for the usual reasons, including the challenge of remotely maintaining and supporting several PACS. With the threat of the pandemic, however, the group decided to rapidly install remote PACS to achieve social distancing goals, and reduce risks for radiologists.

To ensure the remote workstations would mirror the functionality of on-site PACS workstations they used a hardware virtual private network (VPN), despite some lag in response time, they concluded the hardware VPN was still faster than purely software VPN solutions. The hardware includes a device plugged into the home internet router with an Ethernet cable and a software license. To ensure adequate response time the team required home internet connections of at least 100 Mbps.

To facilitate remote maintenance they also installed TeamViewer Remote Access and Support on all workstations, which allows PACS administrators to log in, install, upgrade and troubleshoot systems effectively.

In the end the UAB team concluded the deployment of the remote workstations was a success, and contributed to social distancing and protection of vulnerable radiologists in the hospital and provided seamless interpretation capabilities in emergency scenarios.

Source: American Journal of Roentgenology: 1-3. 10.2214/AJR.20.23495