Every medical facility is concerned with meeting HIPPA regulations in place for the storage of medical records. HIPPA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a law that was passed by the United States Congress in 1996. Part of the Act puts in place national standards for electronic health care documents, which include provisions for privacy and security of health records. Many medical facilities find that switching over to digital imaging from film imaging makes the tasks of archiving and disaster recovery much easier in terms of being HIPPA compliant.

Dicom Storage

Medical offices and imaging centers that utilize Dicom or dicom converters with their analog equipment have many options available in terms of dicom image storage. Dicom storage can happen at individual workstations that are set up with PACS systems. You have the flexibility to select dicom image storage that allows you to copy digital files to a cd or dvd. This is a quick and easy way to backup digital files on individual computers.

You can also save digital images directly to a dicom archive. A dicom archive works in a similar manner to your personal computer's archival system. The central dicom storage server is home to a database that you set up for storing medical digital images. From the dicom archive, digital files can be retrieved at individual workstations in your medical facility. This type of dicom storage also makes it easy to distribute medical digital images as needed.

Disaster Recovery And Dicom Storage

Disasters of a catastrophic nature, such as can occur with floods, fires or hurricanes, mean that your medical facility will need to have a disaster recovery plan in place, as well as one that is HIPPA compliant. Your dicom image storage solution will play a big part in that plan. Your digital files can be backed up daily onto CDs and DVDs as well as your onsite server quickly and easily at your computer workstation. They can also be archived at a secure offsite location, such as your dicom storage server. In this way, the records would be immediately accessible offsite if you could not reach them onsite. Automation of the backup process is entirely possible when you are backing up to your offsite dicom storage server.



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Making the switch from film images to digital medical images is a great way to improve the work flow and efficiency of your medical office. You can save a great deal of time and therefore money by making the switch to digital imaging. Radiology PACS help you accomplish this.

Radiology PACS are Picture Archiving and Communication Systems that allow you to produce, view, archive and transmit digital images. Digital radiology systems utilize both specialized software and hardware, yet many of the systems can be run on personal computers and networks with which you likely are already familiar.

Like all digital products, the cost of radiology pacs systems has dropped over the past several years. This means that Radiology PACS are now within the reach of small to medium-sized medical offices and facilities.

Storage of your digital medical images will also save your medical facility money. In the past, prints had to be made, which were then stored in file folders in large storerooms. It was also a big task to retrieve film images, because you had to wade through all of the files to find the ones you needed. This is a thing of the past with digital radiology systems. With a couple of mouse clicks, you can sort through thousands of digital images files to find the one you want in a matter of seconds. Costs typically associated with storage, including storage space, paper, files, as well as chemicals used to print film images, are completely eliminated with digital radiology systems.

Radiology PACS also help you stay in compliance of HIPPA regulations for the storage of patient records and medical images much more easily than in the past, when up to seven years of hard-copy records had to be stored and backed up. Digital images can be backed up onto CDs and DVDs as well as offsite archiving on hard drives and in databases by using radiology pacs systems.

Radiology pacs systems also allow you to take advantage of teleradiology, where digitized medical images and records can be sent to authorized personnel via the Internet. PACS enables physicians anywhere with Internet service to access medical digital images, thus enabling real-time collaboration with physicians down the hall or around the world. In this way, radiology PACS benefits patients, by giving them better care at a fraction of the traditional cost.

Another advantage that comes from using digital radiology systems is that it utilizes the same computer technology with which you and your office staff are already familiar. Computers are turned into workstations with radiology systems software. Peripherals such as scanners and printers are used in conjunction with radiology pacs systems to allow you to scan hard copy documents and turn them into digital images, or to print out digital images.



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Your medical facility may currently have a host of traditional medical equipment, which might include MRI and CT machines, as well as film x ray, mammography and ultrasound equipment. If you are in the process of making the transition to digital medical imagery, it can be a daunting prospect to replace all of the traditional equipment with digital imaging ones. There is a less expensive solution, however, that will allow you to acquire medical images from any modality, enabling you to then send, receive and archive those images. The solution is to use a dicom converter.

Once film images have been switched to digital through the use of a dicom conversion, you will have a great deal of flexibility with the images. When a dicom converter is used in conjunction with a PACS system, you will be able to view, send and receive digital medical images. You will also be able to archive according to HIPPA standards your medical digital files when you use a dicom conversion to reformat your film images to digital. Offsite backup to a database is also possible for disaster recovery when you take advantage of all that digital imaging has to offer with a dicom converter tool. The conversion tools can also help you stay within your budget, because you can use analog imaging modalities right along with your updated dicom units, so you can upgrade as your budget allows at a time that is right for you.

Dicom tools can also help you with storage of the medical images. Certain dicom conversion systems allow you to record the medical images from dicom to cd or dvd. Using the dicom to cd option allows for quick and easy backups to occur on a regular basis. Dicom to cd imaging is also available when a physician requires a hard copy of a medical image.

Dicom conversion also can happen for static and streamed images. You can use a scanner to scan hard copy film images, and then the dicom tools converts them to digital.

The dicom conversion process also works on digital images that need to be changed over to dicom. You can switch over JPG, BMP, PNG as well as AVI files to dicom files.

There are times when you will need to print out your digital images. Dicom tools make this commonly used process work. You can print images from dicom or Windows systems, adding to the ease with which the system works. These converters also allow you to integrate your digital medical imagery into RIS systems. This means that medical text records can be saved in the same digital format, allowing them to be backed up dicom to cd or dvd as needed.


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