What is Augmentiqs P-PACS?

Augmentiqs  P-PACS is the first Pathology- Picture Archiving and Communication System

• Capture images directly from your microscope
• Digital overlay within eyepiece for efficient work flow
• Collaborate with colleagues in real time
• Pathology workflow, collaboration, and report manager
• A network that allows case data and pathology images to be shared and accessed via the microscope

Where did P-PACS come from?

When x-rays and x-ray technology were discovered by Wilhelm Rontgen in 1895, medical professionals realized that there was a lot of information to be gleaned from a look inside their patients’ bodies. Over time, the field of medical imaging grew, and new imaging techniques such as angiograms, ultrasounds, MRIs, and more were discovered and developed. Until the 1970’s, all of these images were produced on physical film, which the doctor then viewed before making a diagnosis. When digital imaging was developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s, though, everything changed.

Over time, medical diagnostic imaging has transitioned from having physical copies to being stored in a digital format, simplifying storage and access. As more and more diagnostic images were converted to digital, huge amounts of physical storage space were suddenly no longer necessary to keep patient images available for reference. Rather than keeping individual scans and images, it was now possible to keep digital storage media.

The next step forward in digital medical imaging came when these systems became widely available. Rather than medical professionals having to dig through boxes or shelves filled with digital media and pull it up on a workstation, PACS allowed them to simply pull up a patient’s images, both past and present, directly onto a workstation via the network. This not only made storage even more efficient, it simplified the task of comparing each patient’s current scans with previous images, allowing healthcare workers to track changes in the patient’s health more efficiently and accurately.

One concern to keep in mind in regards to PACS is its ability to communicate with the other electronic systems with which it will need to integrate. In an environment such as a hospital, there are often several different PACS systems, each focusing on a different department. Because these different systems often grow separately from each other, it’s not necessarily a given that they will be able to communicate. This significantly complicates the process of accessing and analyzing each patient’s health, as the information needs to be gathered from several different locations. In a situation like this, healthcare providers might decide to implement a vendor neutral archive (VNA), which essentially provides an archiving platform with which all of the other PACS systems can communicate, consolidating all of their data into a single, central location.