Pansys GmbH

Patient databases

The medical digitizing involves classically general databases (EPR, HIS, PIS) and department-oriented applications (LIS, RIS, CIS, PACS, endoscopy software, gynaecology software) sometimes embedded in each other, or at least having to be perfectly integrated to each other

• with communications in HL7, DICOM or other standard if any
• with or without overlapping and redundancy of the archiving
• with or without master patient index.

A communication platform can be necessary in case of integration problems between pre-existing systems (for instance: incomplete system, obsolete concept, obstructive producer). The heterogeneousness of the IDs between different sites or departments can require a MPI (master patient index).

The HIS proposed by Pansys is together global and customizable. Its conceptual priorities are the improvement of the medical workflow and the facilitation of all the data transfers in the hospital.

The proposed LIS (laboratory information system) is oriented to the collecting and transmission of a complete range of biological results, but as well to the integration with the general database (EPR, HIS, PVS) and with some particular applications (RIS, CIS, endoscopy software) for the specific queries issued by those systems.

The integration between the RIS and the PACS aims mainly at synchronizing the viewing of images and data/texts, and at transferring the respective data from one system to the other.

But when together the RIS and the PACS have to be replaced, the easiest, safest and cheapest way consists of acquiring one single system, named in that case RMS (radiology management system), conceptually based on the concept of "one single bag per patient" and providing globally all the features of PACS (diagnostic viewing, teleradiology, image distribution, archive) and of RIS (scheduling, worklist, reporting).

That merge of the RIS and PACS features is initially related to the radiology, as domain of a classical PACS.

The use of the PACS is more and more enlarged to the other image-producing departments (cardiology, gastro-enterology or gynaecology and all other sorts of endoscopy and sonography, dermatology, ophthalmology, etc). Such is the domain of the "PACS 2" or "department PACS".
But even that concept of "PACS2" is too narrow, since it does not cover the management features (scheduling, worklist, reporting). Only a GIMS (global imaging management system) covers, in one single system, the features of together a classical PACS for radiologists, a PACS2 dedicated to the other image producing departments, a RIS, a CIS, and an endoscopy software.
A hospital using such a GIMS has to integrate only 3 main applications: the HIS, the LIS and the GIMS. Such a simplification prevents the costs and worries of multiple integrations, and saves some costs of hardware by limiting the number of necessary servers.

Several hardware solutions of archiving and of backup are available:

• on-line with or without near-line
• on server + RAID or NAS or SAN
• with or without tape back-up
• with or without archive filer

The proposed applications are able to work in a virtualized environment.
The access to the data can be preserved by a failover, and optimally distributed by a load balance.