In late August – early September of 2005, two massive hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, severely damaged most of the Louisiana infrastructure, wiping out PACS, computer networks, and entire clinical installations. Radiologists and clinicians found themselves displaced and disconnected, often unable to come to their usual workplaces. Priorities, workloads have drastically shifted, and providing any kind of PACS-like network has become the only means of re-connecting the broken healthcare workflow.
The authors of this presentation were responsible for providing quick and efficient solutions to the PACS problem, and had to go thru many unusual decisions to make it possible. We had to build a distributed PACS network system from scratch, binding hospital tents, mobile modality units, and telecommuting radiologists into a single functional network. In this presentation, we would like to share some of our experience and typical problems that we had to overcome.
Pianykh, O,
Castaneda-Zuniga, W,
Hot Topic: Post-Katrina PACS Management and Recovery. Radiological Society of North America 2005 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, November 27 - December 2, 2005 ,Chicago IL.
http://archive.rsna.org/2005/4425795.html
