Introduction to Paper by H. K. Huang, D.Sc., et al, ?Digital Radiology at the University of California, Los Angeles: A Feasibility Study?

Abstract

THE PACS CONCEPT was introduced during the First International Conference and Workshop: Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) for Medical Applications in 1982.1 A paper titled “Cost of Managing Digital Diagnostic Images for a 614 Bed Hospital” was presented by Dr. Sam Dwyer.2 It established the methodology on how to justify the cost of implementing a PACS system. The present paper: “Digital Radiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA): A feasibility Study,” published in 1983, used similar methods to estimate the cost of implementing PACS at UCLA. This paper established the guidelines for the PACS implementation at UCLA. Subsequently, the National Institutes of Health funded several large-scale research and development projects at UCLA, including a Program Project Grant (PPG): PACS in Radiology; R01 Grant: Multiple Viewing Stations; and R01 Grant: Image Compression. Later, the Department of Radiological Sciences provided a matching fund for the PPG to launch the PACS for clinical use. The PACS at that time was mainly a standalone system. The author and seven other investigators relocated to the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) in 1992. There they developed a hospital-integrated PACS that was released for clinical use in 1996.3,4 The funds for such development were provided by the National Library of Medicine, the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, the National Cancer Institute, the California Cancer Research Program, Pacific Bell, and an endowment fund provided by UCSF when the group relocated there.5 Since then, the key change in PACS has been an emphasis on health care information system integration, enterprise PACS, and ePR-based (Electronic Patient Record) image distribution.6