PACS World

Microsoft Surface Hub 2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 May 2018 06:33:00 +0000

I came across the Microsoft Surface Hub 2 today. I can imagine this being in a Radiology department in the near future. It would be a great way to display images to a patient or other doctors.

PACS Visio Stencils version 4

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:31:00 +0000

I have updated the PACS Stencils for Microsoft Visio. The latest version includes some additional colours for the modalities and a new C Arm stencil. Please let me know if there are any other PACS related shapes you would like to see in future releases.

Download here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17932085/radiology%20v4.vss

Remember Earth Hour!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 05:36:00 +0000

Don’t forget about earth hour this year 8:30PM March 26.
For those of you who don’t know what it is: Earth hour is the one hour of the year when everyone turns off their lights to raise climate awareness.

Each year my family and I switch off the lights at the mains and have a braai (barbeque for the non South Africans) in the dark. It is for a good cause and a lot of fun.

PS: Please don’t switch off your PACS servers though!

http://www.earthhour.org

Blogger droid test

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 06:34:00 +0000

Just testing blogger droid on my new samsung galaxy s.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Kinect Augmented Reality CT Overlay

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 10:17:00 +0000

Wow! This is a really cool application for Kinect using radiology data. Imagine the possibilities of being able to overlay medical image data over a patient. I don't think it will provide any diagnostic benefit, but it is so cool!

I would really love to play with a system like this!

Kinect & Osirix

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:49:00 +0000

Check out this video I received. It shows Microsoft kinect being used to control Osirix. It looks like a great product and I expect that we will see a lot more similar interfaces showing up soon.

Thanks for sending me the link Steffen.

As they mention in the video the use of hands free controls has major benefits and allows doctors to prevent infection and does not tie them down to a keyboard or mouse.

I hope all the major PACS vendors are looking at this and making their own versions that integrate with their products as I think a lot of doctors are going to start demanding this type of technology for their theaters once they see what is possible.

Microsoft Kinect PACS integration available soon?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:07:00 +0000

I am sure that we will see doctors waving their arms around in front of computers in wards and theatres in the near future. Evoluce has made some progress in allowing microsoft kinect to control a windows based computer.

I am sure that the technology used could be easily adapted to manipulate radiology images in a PACS client.

New look template

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 07:17:00 +0000

I have finally decided to spruce things up a bit and change the look and feel of my blog. Hope you all like the changes. Let me know if you have any issues with the new template.

Old template new template

Microsoft Kinect and PACS?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:20:00 +0000

Microsoft Kinect, previously known as Project Natal, has been released. It is a game controller for the x-box 360 that allows a player to control characters without the use of a controller. The system has sensors that monitor your movement and translate that into commands to move the characters.

I cant help but wonder how long it will take for someone to hack it to work on Windows and allow for doctors in theatre to scroll through images by waving their arms around. I think this would be a very useful tool which will free up the theatre doctors from having to mess around with a keyboard and mouse. (or a Wii remote)

If anyone knows about such a system please pop me a message.

More Visio Stencils

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:17:00 +0000

2012-03-01 - Updated to version 4: http://pacsworld.blogspot.com/2012/03/pacs-visio-stencils-version-4.html

I have updated the Radiology / PACS Visio stencils I posted in the past:
~~http://drop.io/pacsworld_visioStencil_01/~~
Link updated: http://www.mediafire.com/?mcpd293mkh6d3r9
Added Dropbox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17932085/radiology%20v3.vss

New Stencil contains the following Microsoft Office Visio items for radiology / PACS:

MRI Scanner
CT Scanner
CR
Radiologist Workstation * New
Typing workstation with report * New
Typing workstation with headphones * New
Typing workstation with headphones & report * New
Barcode printer * New
Cassette

You can get the updated stencil from the link below:
~~http://drop.io/pacsworld_visioStencil_01/~~ Link updated: http://www.mediafire.com/?mcpd293mkh6d3r9
Added Dropbox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17932085/radiology%20v3.vss
Please let me know if you can think of any other useful Visio stencils I could add to the collection.
(Just pop a comment on this post)
(Update: 20-12-2010: Looks like drop.io has been sold to facebook and the service has been discontinued. I am trying mediafire now as google docs requires a signin to download the visio files. Please let me know if you have any issues accessing the files.)

(Update: 04/01/2011: Added the files to dropbox.com)

Monitoring your PACS environment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 12:34:00 +0000

Ok, so I have been out of action for a while as our practice has been installing a PACS/RIS solution. What I have found out so far from the experience is that being able to actively monitor your entire environment is key to having a smooth operational PACS/RIS system. Our vendor’s product has multiple servers, services, applications and ports running at our various sites. When something goes wrong it is often difficult to identify where the issue lies within this mess of sub systems.

I therefore decided to write an application that actively monitors all the servers, services, applications and ports throughout the enterprise and allows users to fix problems remotely with 2 clicks.

The application is a mash-up of several utilities, brought together into one simple interface that allows users to self troubleshoot and resolve issues.

When an issue is detected the application alerts the user (see below)

The user can then right click on the affected item and click fix. This will either restart the remote service or launch the application (depending on the type of item affected).

I would highly recommend that any admins out there with a large environment look at writing an application such as this to actively monitor all systems. This system will effectively empower my users to resolve 90% of the issues without my intervention and provide them with a simple means of giving me troubleshooting information when I am not on-site.

A Calendar for Radiologists!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:21:00 +0000

Classic post from Dr. Dalia’s Blog: http://doctordalai.blogspot.com/2010/06/bare-naked-calendar.html

New EIZO advertisements!

Credits:

Dr. Dalai: http://doctordalai.blogspot.com/2010/06/bare-naked-calendar.html
EIZO: http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/commercials/eizo/
Butter: http://www.butter.de/

Radiology Viewers in 3 Years?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:15:00 +0000

I think that in the next 3 years there will be no more desktop DICOM viewers being released, there will also be no more active-x PACS solutions.

I came across 2 interesting Google blog posts on the Google Chromium blog.

http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/chrome-web-store.html
http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/sneak-peek-at-native-client-sdk.html

These 2 blog posts hint at Chrome being the future platform of the web. With the web store, web applications can be installed on a client computer and given elevated privileges. Couple this with the Native Client SDK the possibility of creating C/C++ applications that interact with the web provides some exciting possibilities.

I predict that if this technology is widely adopted by the community of internet users, it will soon find its way to Radiology! Just imagine being able to run your PACS application on Windows, MAC, Linux or Chrome OS without any hassles. Imagine the cost savings and security benefits of being able to deploy Chrome OS Net Top desktops to radiologists and having referring physicians using Google Chrome OS net books or any other system running Chromium!

In the video above they demo some basic windowing capabilities that could be used for Radiology. Also with the wealth of C/C++ DICOM libraries out there I am sure that a Chrome Native Client DICOM viewer will appear pretty soon.

Conquest/ClearCanvas Radiologist Work list

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:30:00 +0000

I recently had an article explaining how I wrote a small app that integrates with Conquest and Clearcanvas which allows radiologist to work off a common work list. I have been actively developing the system and managed to make some nice progress. Our Radiologists are currently using the system to load balance Tele-Radiology cases from our remote branches.

The system is effectively allowing 3 doctors to share cases that where previously reported by only 1. This has been a huge hit as we are currently short staffed with 2 radiologists off sick. The workload is now easily handled by the 3 doctors in-between their normal work. This has saved our practice from hiring a temp radiologist to fill in the gap.

I have managed to improve the system to a stage were we have following features:

1.) Locking of studies being viewed by another radiologist

Studies that are locked appear in the list with a little lock and are slightly greyed out. If a radiologist tries to open the image they are given an error message.

2.) Ability to mark cases as reported

Once a case is marked as reported it falls off the main list and can be found if a user select the show reported filter. Reported cases are shown with a little green tick.

3.) Ability to search for studies (based on patient id)

There is a basic search facility for finding patients based on their patient ID.

4.) Display Series information

The series information is displayed once a study is selected.

5.) Colour highlighting of studies based on time waiting

Cases that have been waiting for longer than 30min are shown in yellow and those waiting for longer are shown in red.

6.) Statistics

I created a small stats web page that uses Google charting API to display information about the number of cases for the day, number of cases per day for each branch and number of cases reported by which doctors workstation.

Some of the problems I have encountered:

One of the main problems I have encountered in the system is that the units sending the CR cases from the remote branches seem to send the study one image at a time to my conquest server. When conquest accepts the image and stores it in the database it is immediately displayed on the work list. This is a problem because there is no way I can figure out to display the total number of images in a study / series before it has all been received by the conquest server and some of the CR units appear to send the images out of sequence to the server. I have attempted to change the dicom association level, but this has had little effect. The solution that I came up to for this problem is to display the series information to the doctor and sort it by series number. The radiographers annotate on the first image in the series how many images are being sent. The radiologist can then look at the series information and the series number and determine when all the images have arrived.

How to do it yourself

This system is not rocket science. All you need to do is the following to get a system like this up and running:

Forward all cases to a conquest server and get it to auto-forward cases to clearcanvas workstations you want to report from.
Modify the conquest dicomstudies table to have 4 new fields. (bool is_reported, bool is_locked, text locked_by, text reported_b)
Create an application that can connect to the mysql database and pull the study information out.
Integrate with clearcanvas using the API.
And that is about it. It takes a bit of tweaking, but if I can do it then almost any half decent programmer can.

X-Ray of Kermit the Frog!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:50:00 +0000

I was surfing Digg and came across a link to this image of kermit the frogs x-ray, lol!

Image Credit:
http://www.walyou.com/blog/2010/05/05/x-ray-of-kermit-the-frog/

The puppet x-ray I would really like to see is that of Agmed the dead terrorist.

Image Credit:
http://www.blingcheese.com/image/code/145/silence+i+kill+you.htm

ClearCanvas Integration

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:45:00 +0000

I have managed to integrate ClearCanvas into one of my applications. (Please note this is not a product that I intend on releasing, but I thought it may interest some of you out there who are looking at making a similar solution) I was tasked with sharing the workload for our TeleRadiology workstation (GE Centricity RA600 Workstation). The solution I came up with does the following:

Ge Centricty Workstation forwards all cases to a Conquest server.
I wrote a C# application that then queries the Conquest database and displays a list of patients.
I added 2 new fields to the conquest studies database table ‘study_reported’ & ‘study_locked’, both are type TINYINT(1) with a default value of 0;
The conquest server is set to forward all cases to the relevant ClearCanvas workstations.
When the user double clicks on a case the application opens the study in ClearCanvas and set the study_locked field in the database to 1 to prevent other users from accessing the same study.
The doctor is then presented with a small dialog window that is set to be the topmost window which allows him/her to set the study status to reported or unreported. When they click on these buttons the study_reported status is updated in the database, the study_locked flag is also set to 0 and the application closes the ClearCanvas study.

This application should allow our doctors to share some of the workload between two or more workstations and prevent them from double reporting cases.

Some early screenshots of my hack and slash solution:

The basic worklist page showing normal, locked and reported cases.

Update Study Status dialog showing on top of clearcanvas.

Below is some code taken from the ClearCanvas developers site to perform some of the integration:

Open a new instance of ClearCanvas Workstation:

public static void StartViewer()
       {
           const string processName = "ClearCanvas.Desktop.Executable";
           const string viewerProcessPath = @"C:\Program Files\ClearCanvas\ClearCanvas Workstation";

           Process[] viewerProcesses = Process.GetProcessesByName(processName);
           if (viewerProcesses == null || viewerProcesses.Length == 0)
           {
               string executable = Path.Combine(viewerProcessPath, processName) + ".exe";

               ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(executable, "");
               startInfo.WorkingDirectory = viewerProcessPath;
               Process viewerProcess = Process.Start(startInfo);
               if (viewerProcess == null)
                   MessageBox.Show("Failed to start the viewer process.");
           }
       }

Open the a study in ClearCanvas:

private void openStudy(string uid)
        {
            // check if the study is opened by someone else
            if (!isStudyLocked(uid)) // function to check if the study is locked or not
            {
                // lock the study so no one else opens it
                if (lockStudy(uid)) // function to set the study as locked
                {
                    // open the study in ClearCanvas
                    BasicHttpBinding binding = new BasicHttpBinding();
                    EndpointAddress endpoint = new EndpointAddress("http://127.0.0.1:51124/ClearCanvas/ImageViewer/Automation?wsdl");
                    client = new ViewerAutomationServiceClient(binding, endpoint);

                    try
                    {
                        client.Open();
                        OpenStudiesRequest request = new OpenStudiesRequest();
                        request.ActivateIfAlreadyOpen = true;
                        List<OpenStudyInfo> studiesToOpen = new List<OpenStudyInfo>();

                        OpenStudyInfo info = new OpenStudyInfo(uid);
                        studiesToOpen.Add(info);
                        request.StudiesToOpen = studiesToOpen;
                        client.OpenStudies(request);
                        client.Close();

                        this.Visible = false; // hide the main window
                        Study_Dialog sd = new Study_Dialog(uid); // show the study dialog window
                        sd.ShowDialog();
                        closeOpenViewerWindows(uid); // once the study dialog window is open close the study window in ClearCanvas
                        this.Visible = true; // show the main form again
                        unlockStudy(uid);   // unlock the study in the database
                        updateStudyReportedStatus(uid, studyDialogResult); // update the reported status of the study with the variable set by the study dialog window.
                    }
                    catch (Exception ex)
                    {
                        client.Abort();
                        MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
                        unlockStudy(uid);
                    }

                   // StudyDialog sd = new StudyDialog();
                   // sd.ShowDialog();
                }
            }
            else
            {
                // error the study is opened by someone else
                MessageBox.Show("Study is locked by another user!");
            }
        }

Close the open study windows in ClearCanvas:

public void closeOpenViewerWindows(string uid)
       {
           BasicHttpBinding binding = new BasicHttpBinding();
           EndpointAddress endpoint = new EndpointAddress("http://127.0.0.1:51124/ClearCanvas/ImageViewer/Automation?wsdl");
           client = new ViewerAutomationServiceClient(binding, endpoint);

           try
           {
               client.Open();
               GetActiveViewersResult result = client.GetActiveViewers();
               foreach (Viewer viewer in result.ActiveViewers)
               {
                   CloseViewerRequest cclose = new CloseViewerRequest();
                   cclose.Viewer = viewer;
                   cclose.Viewer.PrimaryStudyInstanceUid = uid;
                   client.CloseViewer(cclose);
               }
               client.Close();
           }
           catch (Exception)
           {
               client.Abort();
               throw;
           }
       }

ClearCanvas 2.0 Released

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:21:00 +0000

Clearcanvas has released version 2 of it product suite (Workstation, RIS & Server).

Story: http://www.clearcanvas.ca/dnn/Home/News/tabid/196/EntryId/72/ClearCanvas-RIS-PACS-2-0-now-available.aspx

ClearCanvas 2.0 Beta – Emailing JPG Images

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:19:00 +0000

Emailing JPG images using ClearCanvas external application feature and a bat script.

As per my last post here is a way to email JPG images. I can only get it to do single images at the moment. I have not managed to devise a way to convert and attach multiple images yet. (My bat scripting is a bit rusty)

This is how I did it:

Requirements

ClearCanvas 2.0 Beta or higher (With External Applications feature)
Blat Command line emailer - http://www.blat.net/
dcmj2pnm.exe from DCMTK - http://dicom.offis.de/dcmtk

Steps:

1.) Create folder C:\test\ (Or what ever you want to call it, just update accordingly). Add the dcmj2pnm.exe file to this folder.

2.) Create Bat Script in the folder created above with the following in it:

(Please change the directories, email addresses and server names accordingly)

@ECHO OFF

    :PROMPT
    cls
    echo ClearCanvas Email Script
    echo.
    echo Please enter recipient email address:
    set /p email=
    :CONVERT
    cls
    echo ClearCanvas Email Script
    echo.
    echo Converting Images to JPG
    dcmj2pnm.exe +oj +Wm --scale-x-size 1024 %1 C:\test\%2_.jpg
    :SEND
    cls
    echo ClearCanvas Email Script
    echo.
    echo Sending Email Message
    blat.exe -server servername -f user@domain.com -to %email% -subject "Images - %3" -sensitivity 1 -body "Images Attached" -html -attach "C:\test\%2_.jpg"
    :END
pause

3.) Setup the external application as per image below:

There is room for improvement in the script such as error checking etc. But for now it is a nice simple JPG email system a right click away!

Hope this is useful to someone out there.

ClearCanvas 2.0 Beta – External Applications Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:27:00 +0000

I managed to get ClearCanvas to pull reports from our own RIS system using the external applications feature in the new Beta 2.0 version.

Thanks to Jonathan for pointing me to the new ClearCanvas channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/clearcanvas.

Our RIS application has a web interface that allows for reports to be accessed using a basic URL. So all I did was point an external application to internet explorer and add the relevant parameters to it.

The $001000020$ tag is for the patient ID, which is what we currently use to identify patient reports. You can pull out any dicom tag using this tool.

I did however find that I was unable to use normal command line shortcuts like %SystemRoot% or %ProgramFiles% shortcuts. But it is not a major train smash.

Below is the video from ClearCanvas that explains how to setup an external application.

This is yet another great new feature added by ClearCanvas that can have many applications. Here are a coupe of other ideas on things that can be done with this great feature:

Convert Images to JPG:

You can use dcmj2pnm.exe from DCMTK (http://dicom.offis.de/dcmtk) to convert images to JPG.
Check out the screenshot below: This converts the image to a 1024 width JPG image.

I still need to figure out a method of using this feature to convert all images in a series, but at the moment the screenshot below will help you convert single images.

Email Images Using Blat:

You can get blat from http://www.blat.net/.

I think the screenshot below explains it pretty well. Just remember that you will need relay rights in order to use this. The script below will also only send the images to one person and one image at a time. I think It would be possible to write a bat script to do it more efficiently.

Emailing Multiple JPG Images

It should be possible to create a bat script that uses the above applications to convert images to JPG and then attach them to an email to be sent to an email address obtained from the user via a prompt. I am going to work on this a bit and see what I can come up with.

If there are any other external command line applications that you would like to see being used in ClearCanvas and you need a hand drop a comment with some information and I’ll see if I can help out.

Once again, thanks to the ClearCanvas team for make a really great application and continuing to add useful features!

DICOM Standard Updated

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:55:00 +0000

The DICOM Standard documents have been updated and can be found here: ftp://medical.nema.org/medical/dicom/2009/

The latest version of the standard is the 2009 base standard.

Thanks to Bastula on twitter for the news: http://twitter.com/bastula

Blog Statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:19:00 +0000

Another year has gone by and PACS World has been going for 3 years now! I thought it was time to share some more stats with my readers about my blog.

Monthly Visits Dec 2006 – Jan 2010

The monthly visits of pacsworld have increased from about 20 a month to just over 1000 visits a month. Since my blogs inception there have been 18,696 visits.

Operating Systems:

Again windows seems to be ruling the roost, but it has taken a small dip compared to last times statistics.

Browser Statistics
I am glad to see that the browser statistics have changed since my last statistics post.
Firefox seems to have taken over as the browser of choice amongst my readers. (Even though I am a Chrome user!)

Most Popular Content:

Below is a table of the most popular content on my blog since it all began in November 2006.

ClearCanvas Workstation 2.0 Beta

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:12:00 +0000

Happy New Year to all out there. I am back from a nice short holiday. I have a new laptop, a nice shiny new Dell Latitude E6500. It has an x64 processor and I am running Windows 7 Pro. I have been going through the motions of getting all my applications installed and I came across a bit of an issue with ClearCanvas 1.5. I kept getting an error when I opened ClearCanvas: “Unable to Query server My Studies: An Error occurred while performing the study root query”. I tried the latest version of ClearCanvas 2.0 Beta, but got the same error message. After going through some of the ClearCanvas forums I found that the issues was due to an incompatibility of the Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition I had. So I uninstalled it and re-installed ClearCanvas and it seems to be working fine now.

I have only just begun playing with ClearCanvas 2.0 Beta, but I have already noticed some handy features I am sure a lot of users will enjoy, my favourite new features are:

MPR:

There is now an MPR feature in ClearCanvas, which appears to work pretty well. This is a feature that many of our radiologists where looking for in viewer software.

New “Open Selection with MPR” button.

Scroll Bars:

There are now scroll bars on the side of series of images. This allows for nice quick scrolling to points of interest as apposed to using the keyboard or mouse wheel to navigate images.

ClearCanvas 2.0 : Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:21:00 +0000

I got my hands on the daily build of the next version of ClearCanvas which is due to be released early next year. The main feature I was after was scheduled auto routing.

Please note:
This preview is of a pre-release version of ClearCanvas, it is not to be used in production.

Scheduled Auto-Routing:
You can now auto forward images at certain non-peak times to a central archive to reduce bandwidth usage during the day.

Admin Dashboard:
The new admin dashboard in the ClearCanvas 2.0 pre-release looks very impressive. It gives an administrator a nice snapshot of what is happening on the server with information such as server disk utilization, duplicate studies, latest log entries, etc. This is a very useful feature that will greatly assist administration of the server. I do however wish they had a big red icon displayed when the ClearCanvas Image service is no longer running on the machine.

You can get the pre-release from the ClearCanvas website: www.clearcanvas.ca

The features above are major improvements in functionality for my environment and once this release becomes available in a stable form, I am going to implement it for one of our new departments for active daily use.

ClearCanvas: First Open Source ISO 13485:2003 Certified PACS/RIS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:53:00 +0000

ClearCanvas PACS/RIS open source Radiology software is now ISO 13485:2003 certified. The ISO 13485:2003 certification specifies as per their website:

“ISO 13485:2003 specifies requirements for a quality management system where an organization needs to demonstrate its ability to provide medical devices and related services that consistently meet customer requirements and regulatory requirements applicable to medical devices and related services.”

source: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=36786

As per ClearCanvas’ press release on their website they are also going to strive for further certification to allow their products to be used legally in the US & Canada.

“We've always taken pride in creating top quality software and this makes it official. In the coming months, we will be pursuing certifications from various regulatory bodies as well, including Health Canada and the FDA, so please stay tuned!”

source: http://www.clearcanvas.ca/dnn/Home/News/tabid/196/EntryId/65/Worlds-first-ISO-13485-certified-open-source-RIS-PACS.aspx

Well done to the ClearCanvas guys again for pushing the open source radiology software 1 step closer to being a reality for everyone! Keep up the good work and we are eagerly awaiting future news and software releases.

Feedback: 1st African PACS & RIS Edu-conference

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:49:00 +0000

The 1st African PACS & RIS Edu-conference was a fantastic event. I think the organisers put together a great show and taught the local PACS & RIS community a great many things.

I am so glad to know that there are that many Southern African people out there going through the same issues that we are. It was a real eye opener to share in the experiences of both private practice and that of government, who share some issues, but on the whole have very different outlooks on the systems at large.

The formation of a local organisation to address PACS & RIS issues was raised. I think this will be a great asset to the local community as it will give us a platform to communicate, educate and drive the industry forward.

Well done to the event organisers, it was great to be a part of the event and thank you for teaching us so much.

http://www.pacsrisafrica.com