The Numerous Advantages of Digital Medical Imaging

Have you ever wondered how hospitals manage all those thousands of patient's records? If you think about it, that's a lot of paperwork to file away and then find at a moments notice. Well, thanks to new and developing technologies in the field like scalable PACS, storing and accessing a patient's medical records has never been easier. All those records ranging from x-rays to cardiology PACS are now stored on computers.

Electronic health records refer to the digital format medical records are now stored as. Electronic health record systems such as PACS and the PACS archive assist in the storage and retrieval of patients' records through the use computers. Digital medical images accessed on a computer or a scalable PACS system, often over a wide network consisting of many locations and sources. You may not realize this but there is a large variety of healthcare-related information stored and accessed in this PACS manner.

There are a number of different types of important medical data which can be stored in electronic health records. Some of these electronic medical record would normally include:

1. Demographics of patients.
2. A patient's medical history, examination and progress reports of health and illnesses such as cardiology PACS.
3. Medicine and allergy lists, along with the status of immunization shots.
4. Any laboratory test results.
5. Radiology images such as cardiology PACS, X-rays, CTs, MRIs, etc.
6. Images from endoscopy or laparoscopy or clinical photographs.
7. Important medication information stored in the PACS archive, like side-effects and interactions.
8. Evidence-based recommendations for specific medical conditions. This is especially true in cardiology PACS situations.
9. Past appointments and other reminders.
10. Billing records.
11. Eligibility

Advantages of digital PACS archive imaging over paper records:

Medical records were traditionally stored on a physical means such as X-ray film, paper notes, and even photographs instead of digitally such as cardiology PACS. It was never easy either. The storage of physical documents can be quite problematic, since not all document types fit in the same size folders or storage spaces. In the current medical environment, patients are undergoing procedures all over the world. Many international patients travel to US cities for specialty treatment. Some even travel to participate in clinical trials. Coordinating all of these medical treatments and visits through a paper trail is a time-consuming, and often dangerous, procedure.

Paper medical records are a common source of mistakes and misunderstanding due to poor legibility. The majority of medical errors are due to this problem. Pre-printed forms, the standardization of abbreviations, and standards for handwriting are encouraged to improve reliability of paper medical records but even that is very old fashioned in comparison to scalable PACS. Electronic PACS [http://www.candelisimagegrid.com/products_pacsappliance.asp] records assist with this standardization of forms, terminology and abbreviations, as well as data input.