Customised Individual Solutions Required to Combat Complexities in PACS Installation.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c46571) has announced the addition of "The Current and Future Market for PACS Professional Services in Europe" to their offering.

Customised Individual Solutions Required to Combat Complexities in PACS Installation

Increasing emphasis on improving the workflow in the radiology departments of healthcare institutions in Europe has led to greater demand for picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) due to their ability to digitise the imaging process and archive the images. Currently, with the installation of radiology information systems (RIS) on parallel tracks with PACS, the technical profile of generic PACS is becoming increasingly complex. Simultaneously, the installation of local and wide area networks (LAN and WAN) to provide adequate bandwidth and essential archiving has augmented existing complexities. Hence, vendors will need to produce fully integrated workstations that offer a consistent user-interface for all the modalities. Despite the standardisation provided by the digital communication in medicine (DICOM) platform, gaining a competitive edge in the market will depend on vendors ability to offer customised individual solutions.

The Frost & Sullivan research examines the current and future markets for PACS professional services in Europe. The study analyses major industry challenges, market drivers and restraints as well as the potential threats faced by market participants along with a comprehensive analysis of the market.

Vendors to Reduce Organisational Costs to Protect Profit Margins

With PACS becoming a mainstream application, end users demands for customised solutions and their requests for proposal (RFP) have increased. Vendors will need to deal with each PACS installation on an individual basis, which is likely to reduce the economies of scale.

As differing tiers of healthcare institutions (such as small clinics and diagnostic treatment centres) are installing PACS, large vendors in the market are faced with competition from small, local vendors that have the advantage of reduced internal cost structures. Hence, companies that manage their internal cost structures and organisational costs most effectively will be able to offer greater functionality at competitive prices without narrowing profit margins, notes the analyst of the research service. This will ensure the conversion of unit shipment growth into a corresponding rise in revenues. Additionally, large and more established vendors should remain flexible to respond to varying customer needs.

Technological Advances to Fuel the Uptake of PACS Solutions

Technological advances such as improvements in individual PACS components have created improvised workstations, which assist the process of optimising workflow, says the analyst. This is likely to be enhanced with the advent of voice-recognition technology (VRT), which can be incorporated into PACS to create efficiencies in radiology reporting, dictation and transcription processes.

Further, vendors have broadened the workstation portfolio to adjust the level of specification for each product to develop a clear distinction between primary diagnosis, secondary and tertiary review. Consequently, the process of equipping hospital enterprises with PACS is likely to be less capital-intensive since low-end tertiary review stations can be installed in locations such as the emergency wards. This is likely to lead to significant cost savings to end users, thereby fuelling the uptake of PACS solutions.

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