Planning factors for developing an enterprise-wide picture archiving and communication system maintenance program

Picture archiving and communication system (PACS) maintenance on an individ ual site basis has historically been a complex and costly challenge. With t he advent of enterprise-wide PACS projects such as the Virtual Radiology En vironment (VRE) project, the challenge of a maintenance program with even m ore complexities has presented itself. The approach of the project manageme nt team for the VRE project is not one of reactive maintenance, but one of highly proactive planning and negotiations, in hopes of capitalizing on the economies of scale of an enterprise-wide PACS maintenance program. A proac tive maintenance program is one aspect of life-cycle management. As with an y capital acquisition, life-cycle management may be used to manage the spec ific project aspects related to PACS. The purpose of an enterprise-wide war ranty and maintenance life-cycle management approach is to maintain PACS at its maximum operational efficiency and utilization levels through a flexib le, shared, yet symbiotic relationship between local, regional, and vendor resources. These goals include providing maximum operational performance le vels on a local, regional, and enterprise basis, while maintaining acceptab le costs and resource utilization levels. This goal must be achieved withou t negatively impacting point of care activities, regardless of changes to t he clinical business environment. Copyright (C) 2000 by W.B. Saunders Compa ny.