I am attending the SIIM regional meeting in Philadelphia. Keeping the sword sharp by listening to experts talk about challenges in radiology and informatics. Good turnout. Great to see some friends.

Noted some increasingly commonly reported trends…

• Funds for PACS expansion, upgrades, and replacements are threatened by the focus on EMR adoption.
• Enterprise imaging is becoming a focus for informatics professionals; a VNA is the most common place sought to store these images.
• In addition to the VNA taking the “A” out of PACS, it seems most people are looking to PACS add-ons (“PACS Apps?”) to solve problems over looking for a solution engineered into their PACS. I wonder if this is because of the focus that a smaller vendor can apply to the problem space, or that PACS vendor resources are consumed with managing the installed base, or that they are strategically reducing R&D investment as the PACS market become saturated and radiology revenues decline.