In today’s healthcare environment, computer and information technology have become key factors in reducing costs, improving efficiency, and providing better patient care. In the field of radiology, innovations in digital imaging have facilitated the development of PACS. Currently, PACS has become a critical technology and infrastructure in modern medical radiology practices, playing an extremely important role in clinical diagnosis, medical research, and other areas.
What is PACS?
PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) is a dedicated system used in the healthcare industry to store, manage, and transmit medical images (such as CT, MRI, X-rays, etc.). It replaces traditional film with digital images, supporting quick retrieval, sharing, and long-term archiving of images, and integrates with hospital information systems (HIS), radiology information systems (RIS), and others. The core standard of PACS is DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine), which ensures compatibility between images from different devices.
The medical image information system PACS is a very important objective diagnostic tool in hospital clinical diagnosis and difficult case consultations, and it is characterized by large data volumes and rapid growth. In medical institutions, the volume of PACS image data grows annually by tens or even hundreds of terabytes. According to industry regulations, these data must be retained for at least 15 years, but the relevance of medical images usually does not extend beyond 6 months. After 6 months, the frequency of data access is relatively low. Therefore, hospital data centers must ensure high-performance and high-availability access to PACS image data while also meeting data retention requirements, implementing online, near-line, and offline lifecycle data storage and management.
PACS Storage and Security Requirements
Based on the above analysis, the IT infrastructure of the healthcare industry has the following data storage and security requirements:
1. The primary medical images in the PACS system are image documents, with relatively low concurrent access but large file sizes. According to surveys, top-tier hospitals add about 7.5 million files annually to PACS. After 15 years, the archival pool is expected to exceed 100 million files. The vast amount of files results in slower read/write response times in the storage system, causing significant lag when retrieving data from the archive pool, which severely impacts medical business operations.
2. The PACS stores a large volume of data, which grows rapidly. After 6-12 months, most of the data will be archived and needs to be stored securely and accessed conveniently at any time. The data must be stored through a tiered strategy. Some legal regulations require outpatient image data to be stored for no less than 15 years and inpatient image data for no less than 30 years. Hospitals usually do not distinguish between outpatient and inpatient data and do not consider deletion after the retention period, leading to significant space usage for long-term storage. Traditional storage hardware has closed compatibility, with high expansion and maintenance costs. Hospitals urgently need a cost-effective, overall data storage and management solution that ensures fast access in the early stages and low-cost storage in the later stages.
3. As the data volume grows, diagnostic and browsing workstations require faster online image retrieval speeds, ideally in the seconds range.
4. Some image data is used for research and teaching, and its importance requires a reliable and effective disaster recovery data protection solution.
5. Data migration is difficult. As image data is stored for long periods, the failure rate of hardware increases after five years of operation, and the migration of massive small files when replacing storage takes months, occupying a lot of manpower and resources.
Common Storage Methods for PACS Data
For image data, its three significant characteristics present challenges for storage and backup:
1. Massive Data: Without algorithm optimization, the number of files can reach hundreds of millions, making it difficult to improve reading efficiency.
2. Fragmented Files: The image data for the same patient is usually saved in multiple independent files. During archiving, the integrity and consistency of the files must be guaranteed.
3. Complex Hierarchical Relationships: The directory structure of files is interrelated with indexes in the RIS database. Once the original hierarchical relationships are disrupted, user information retrieval is prone to errors.
At the initial stage of hospital informatization, local storage or NAS shared storage devices were often used for storage. With the explosive growth of hospital data, storage systems based on tiered storage architecture gradually evolved into online, near-line, and offline storage structures. However, many hospitals still use optical disc libraries or tape libraries for offline storage, which greatly reduces the convenience and efficiency of data retrieval by medical staff in the future.
Traditional centralized storage architectures using SAN+NAS for managing massive unstructured files and archiving have significant drawbacks in query performance and scalability. On the other hand, object storage, using new storage technologies, has clear advantages in the reliability, access performance, and management convenience of PACS image data archiving, making it an effective solution for managing massive files.
As a result, object storage solutions based on private clouds or local hardware deployments are becoming increasingly popular. This brings the challenge of how to quickly and effectively migrate massive data to object storage, which has become a major challenge for the digital construction of the healthcare industry.
Now, with the deepening of healthcare informatization, more and more medical institutions are migrating image data to the cloud for centralized storage, management, and sharing. This shift not only improves the efficiency of medical services but also greatly facilitates patient care.
Benefits of Cloud for Medical Imaging
The approach of putting medical imaging on the cloud is indeed worth recognizing and promoting, as it brings significant benefits to patients, medical institutions, and the entire healthcare industry on multiple levels:
1. Reducing Patient Burden: Through the establishment of cloud platforms, patients can avoid repeated examinations at different hospitals, reducing economic expenditure and the risk of bodily harm, while also saving time and energy.
2. Feasibility of Technology Implementation: Technologically, it is no longer difficult for hospitals to establish their own medical imaging databases. By building unified platforms and coordination mechanisms, data sharing and intercommunication can be achieved, eliminating information barriers. Successful cases have been seen in other fields.
3. Data Value and Technological Innovation: The massive accumulation of medical imaging data provides valuable resources for big data analysis, exploring disease mechanisms, researching new treatment strategies, and training artificial intelligence, helping to drive technological innovation in the healthcare industry.
4. Improved Medical Service Efficiency: The establishment of cloud platforms allows data to "move more" while patients "move less", reducing healthcare costs and improving the efficiency and quality of medical services.
5. Promoting Balanced Distribution of Medical Resources: Through cloud platforms, grassroots medical institutions can easily access imaging data from large hospitals, helping to improve the level of healthcare services at the grassroots level and promote the balanced distribution of medical resources.
How to Migrate PACS Data to Object Storage or Cloud Platform?
As a professional virtual machine backup vendor, Vinchin Backup & Recovery has been deeply involved in the disaster recovery industry for many years, optimizing platform architectures for numerous medical institutions and providing next-generation informatization support.
Vinchin Backup & Recovery delivers efficient and secure data migration solutions for medical institutions, ensuring compliance with industry regulations like HIPAA. With robust cross-platform backup and migration capabilities, it simplifies data transfer to S3 and other cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure, Wasabi, etc. It also offers enterprise-grade NAS backup and recovery.
Its optimized handling of mass small file backups improves efficiency and reduces costs, especially for medical imaging data. Advanced features like incremental backups, deduplication, and built-in disaster recovery enhance storage optimization and system availability.
To create a backup for S3 with Vinchin Backup & Recovery, just follow the steps below:
1. Select the backup source object storage.
2. Select backup destination.
3. Configure backup strategies.
4. Review and submit the job.
Come on and experience the full capabilities of this robust system with a complimentary 60-day trial! Contact us with your requirements, and you will receive a tailored solution for your IT landscape.
PACS Migration FAQs
What are the 4 components of PACS?
The four main components of a PACS are imaging modalities, storage systems (archiving servers), workstations, and communication networks. Imaging modalities include devices like X-ray machines and MRIs that capture medical images. Storage systems securely store these images and associated data, often in digital formats like DICOM. Workstations allow healthcare professionals to view and analyze the images, while communication networks facilitate the transfer of data between modalities, storage, and workstations, ensuring efficient and timely access to the images.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the integration of cloud-based solutions into PACS storage and management presents a transformative opportunity for the healthcare industry. By migrating medical image data to the cloud, hospitals can overcome the challenges of massive data volumes, improve access speed, and ensure long-term data security. This shift not only enhances operational efficiency but also contributes to better patient care, data sharing, and technological innovation, ultimately benefiting both medical institutions and patients alike.
