While the radiology PACS sector appears saturated, there are still market opportunities related to archiving, sharing, and providing enterprise-wide access to images, according to a new report from Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics.
HIMSS Analytics surveyed 144 U.S. hospital, healthcare system, and ambulatory PACS and radiology leaders and found that radiology PACS was heavily used, with the same entrenched vendors appearing to dominate the market over the past several years. However, the market is mixed on obtaining the next generation of storage and image sharing technologies; nearly 50% of respondents indicated they were using an enterprise image viewer to meet their imaging needs, according to the report.
The market research firm also observed more utilization of image repositories.
"While many organizations currently utilize multiple servers across their organization to address their storage needs, there was an increase in the adoption of image repositories with dynamic imaging capabilities and cloud solutions," HIMSS Analytics said. "With image sharing across organizations only expected to rise there is room across these storage solutions for growth."
PACS workstations continue to be a staple both in and outside of the radiology department for viewing images, but organizations are also increasingly implementing image-enabled electronic health records, according to the company. Respondents pointed to tablets (35.5%) and smartphones (28.9%) as the top areas for technology to facilitate enterprise-wide image viewing.
