Financial troubles dip sales for another year

There are several hundreds of vendors offering health information technology today. The top manufacturers are seeing some growth, but minimally, and from an industry standpoint, market research shows that the PACS market alone has dropped in sales over the past two to three years in excess of 20 percent.

"It's the feeling across the board that the PACS and RIS market is down and has been the past couple of years and will be flat at best and probably down again in 2010," says Long.

Vendors are unlikely to encounter the kind of enthusiasm they were seeing just five years ago, because most integrated health networks and large university hospitals already have PACS and market saturation is becoming a reality. Replacement and expansion is where things are going for these institutions. The areas where there is opportunity for growth is in the smaller communities and in specialty departments of large hospitals that, until now, have not had a lot of association with other areas of the hospital.

Bring in the specialty PACS

There is a growing desire in the industry to have a single PACS that can handle all modalities, including specialized cardiology and molecular imaging data. This is the cutting edge of PACS technology today.

"Most major hospitals have a cardiology PACS and some form of specialty PACS for molecular imaging. However, only a few of the larger health care providers in the country have integrated solutions allowing them to provide comprehensive PACS solutions for all modalities," notes Xiaoyi Wang, president and co-CEO of Thinking Systems. "Currently, none of the PACS from the major OEMs are capable of doing so, leaving room for specialty PACS/RIS to flourish."

Until the technology catches up with the demand in the industry, upgrades and integrated software can help bridge that gap. One of Thinking Systems' functions is to work with leading vendors to provide those integrating technologies.

"Although many institutions may have a mini-PACS, or specialty PACS, solution for providing some kind of archive or viewing, if it requires radiologists to go to specific dedicated workstations to access the images for interpretation, it is a workflow bottleneck," Wang remarks. "Many institutions are either searching for third-party plug-in solutions to enhance existing PACS, or integrated solutions for new PACS purchases. For the major radiology PACS vendors, such plug-ins, or integrated solutions, are still provided by third-party vendors."

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