The 5 Most Important Features Your PACS System Must Have in 2025
Picture archiving and communication system (PACS) software has become an indispensable tool for managing medical images and associated data in radiology departments.
As we move towards 2025, PACS systems must evolve with the latest technological innovations to address emerging needs and empower radiology workflows.
Selecting optimal PACS software is crucial for maximizing productivity and delivering superior patient care.
This article discusses the 5 most vital and the best PACS system radiology capabilities your system will need to succeed in the landscape of 2025:
- Intelligent Workflow
- Anywhere Access
- Seamless Integrations
- Impeccable Analytics
- Next-Gen Security
1. Intelligent Workflow
Smooth workflows and smart productivity-enhancing tools will be necessities for radiology in 2025, not nice-to-haves.
Your ideal PACS solution should include powerful yet intuitive features which remove tedious tasks, enable touch less orchestration between modalities, streamline reporting, and auto-prioritize critical cases for radiologists.
The system could leverage AI to pre-fetch relevant prior imaging, populate protocols, standardize annotations, recognize repetitive tasks and enable one-click completion.
This amplifies efficiency, fuels productivity, and allows your staff to concentrate more on delivering timely interpretations and compassionate patient care.
2. Anywhere Access
Subspecialization and multidisciplinary cooperation will be the future drivers of radiology.
Enabling access from anywhere at any time will be pivotal for groups with complex structures.
Choose a web-based PACS which allows access across devices, networks and locations.
This eliminates proximity barriers, facilitates remote working, cross-team consults and pool coverage from home. Prioritize advanced data security to securely unlock mobility.
3. Seamless Integrations
Siloed systems lead to scattered data and disjointed workflows, which hamper productivity.
Your optimal PACS should integrate seamlessly across modalities, RIS, EMRs, AI ecosystems and other pertinent systems via bi-directional HL7 and FHIR integrations.
This unified platform perspective consolidates relevant data, paints a more holistic patient picture and harmonizes touch points across the workflow.
Smooth interoperability will be pivotal as specialized modalities and exponential data growth puts greater emphasis on a connected, insights-driven ecosystem.
● Benefits of Integration
○ Consolidated patient & practice analytics
○ No manual data reconciliation
○ Contextual recommendations from patient data patterns
According to an American College of Radiology study, radiologists lose 33% of their time coordinating care rather than interpreting studies due to inefficient IT ecosystems. Optimal PACS integration is key to reversing this.
4. Impeccable Analytics
Data-driven insights will dictate operational success in the future. To thrive in value-based models, your PACS system needs to offer robust analytics on patient care, operational metrics and diagnostic benchmarks.
Prioritize systems offering drillable dashboards, custom reporting, standardized metrics covering revenue, productivity, protocol adherence and meaningful comparisons to uncover opportunities.
Using metrics to guide initiatives can boost efficiency, revenues, quality of care and physician satisfaction.
Key Analytics Capabilities
5. Next-Gen Security
Finally, advanced cyber security capabilities will undoubtedly rank among the most indispensable elements of future PACS systems with heightened data vulnerability risks.
Verify your system offers multi-layered protections spanning access controls, data encryption at-rest and in-transit, confidentiality safeguards, activity audit trails and runs mandatory cyber security training for users.
Prioritizing security allows you to defend against breach risks in an ecosystem with exponentially greater data generation and reliance.