VNA and PACS market to grow to $3.87 billion by 2023

PARCA eNews – March 5, 2020 – Meticulous Research, a global market research company published a research report on its global forecast to 2023 for the VNA and PACS market.

Meticulous Research analyzed the vendor neutral archive (VNA) & picture archiving and communication system (PACS) market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2% from 2018 to reach $3.87 billion by 2023.

Operating an open source PACS

Avram Adam is Network/Systems Administrator at Arizona State Radiology group, which operates 13 locations and provides radiology services to four hospitals in the Tucson area. Adam has been working in PACS for radiology for about two years and before that worked with the City of Tucson and at a credit union primarily in systems administrator and network administrator roles. As chief technology officer as well the HIPAA security officer for Arizona State Radiology he manages all the networking systems, which handle about a half a million studies a year.

Q. What prompted you to seek open source PACS solutions?

Because current offerings don’t have all of the functionality we are looking for.

DHS warns of Citrix vulnerability under attack

Credit Citrix blog

PARCA eNews – Jan. 18, 2020 – The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity unit has issued an alert about a weakness in the Citrix Application Delivery Controller and Ctirx Gateway web server applications that are experiencing active attacks.

Public comment sought on ONC 5-year plan

PARCA eNews – Jan. 15, 2020 – The draft 2020-2025 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (plan) was posted Jan. 15 by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), for public comment.

The plan was developed in collaboration with over 25 federal organizations and is intended to guide federal health information technology (IT) activities over the course of the year.

MAZE malware adds blackmail element to ransom demand

PARCA eNews – Jan. 8, 2020 – The FBI issued an advisory calling for private organizations to be vigilant to combat the Maze ransomware attacks that started last November.

Dubbed MAZE, the ransomware uses multiple methods for intrusion, including creation of malicious look-alike cryptocurrency and spam campaigns impersonating government agencies.

The view for 2020: AHIMA continues to push for patient safety in 2020

PARCA eNews _ Jan. 2, 2020 – Despite the setback to lifting the decades old ban on development of a universal patient identifier last September, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) vows to continue to push forward on patient safety by making 2020 the year of Patient Matching.

Mary Butler outlined AHIMA’s goals for 2020 in an article on the organization’s website, stating that, "AHIMA has never waited for Congress to start advocating for better ways to improve patient safety, so the association is ready to make 2020 “The Year of Patient Matching” regardless of whether the Senate votes to remove the ban on a UPI." Ms Butler wrote."

Spending bill includes $50 million for healthcare data initiative

PARCA eNews – Dec. 31, 2019 – Lost in all the other things going on in Washington, D.C. at the end of 2019 was the $1.4 Trillion spending package Congress passed and the president signed to fund the US Government through September 2020.

Included in the bill was $50 million for the first year of the Data: Elemental to Health Campaign, a multi-year initiative aimed at modernizing public health data systems, including surveillance and analytics at the CDC as well as state and local health departments.

Researchers produce first laser ultrasound images of humans

Photo courtesy MIT News

PARCA eNews – Dec. 19, 2019 – MIT engineers have demonstrated an alternative to conventional ultrasound that doesn’t require contact with the body to see inside a patient.

In a paper published Dec. 19, 2019 in the Nature journal Light: Science and Applications, the researchers scanned the forearms of several volunteers and observed common tissue features such as muscle, fat, and bone, down to about 6 centimeters below the skin. The images were judged comparable to conventional ultrasound, but were produced without patient contact using remote lasers focused on a volunteer from half a meter away.

Risks of AI pose complex challenges to deployment in healthcare

Professor Nicholson Price, University of 
Michigan. Credit Petrie-Flom Center - 
Harvard University

Nicholson Price is a professor of law teaching and writing in the areas of intellectual property, health law, and regulation, particularly focusing on the law surrounding innovation in the life sciences. He previously was an assistant professor of law at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, an academic fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Previously, he clerked for the Hon. Carlos T. Bea of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received a JD and a PhD in biological sciences from Columbia University and an AB in biological sciences from Harvard College.​  PARCA eNews spoke to Mr. Price following an article he wrote for Brookings about the risks and remedies for AI in healthcare to get his perspective on those risks with regard to radiology and PACS administrators.

RSNA launches initiative to boost imaging sharing

Credit RSNA 2019

PARCA eNews – Dec. 4, 2019 – The RSNA and Carequality announced the addition of a supplement to the Imaging Data Exchange Guide at a town hall event at its 2019 RSNA’s 105th Scientific Assembly and Annual meeting in Chicago in December. 

The supplement expands the scope of the Carequality Interoperability Framework to detail technical standards for exchanging medical images.