Radiology and PACS

About the Feature

PACS

Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) is a medical imaging technology which provides storage and convenient access to images from multiple modalities (imaging equipment). The images are transmitted digitally from modality and stored in PACS. The universal format for this is DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine). The DICOM images are seen using a DICOM image viewer which could be native or web based.

Read this excellent write-up on how Bahmni was deployed and setup at Annoor Hospital in Jordan for Chest xRay management with a PACS setup: https://talk.openmrs.org/t/an-overview-of-a-pacs-integration-strategy/34119

Bahmni supports 2 ways of managing Radiology workflows:

Via Radiology Upload
Using PACS Integration

Bahmni provides the ability to integrate with PACS to send radiology orders and access fulfillments (radiology images) via a link to the DICOM web viewer. The integration with PACS has two main functions :

Send the radiology order created in Bahmni to PACS server.
Provide the ability to view the image stored in PACS against the corresponding radiology order.

Where is it Used?

The orders are usually placed by doctors and sometimes by other staff on behalf of the doctor based on pre-decided protocols. The radiology images are seen by Doctors for diagnostic purposes.