The day of the vendor provided workstation is coming to an end. For so long we have always heard that we have to purchase our PACS workstations pre-built and pre-configured. Well, I think the time is upon us here it is time to take control of our workstations. Your organization can gain a lot by moving PACS workstation development in house. You can save money, standardize workstation build and utilize your organizations software such as antivirus and patch management.
I am currently in the process of building a Centricity 1000 workstation form scratch and want to say that it is not the mysterious process that these vendors will have you believe. We simply purchased a license, obtained the software and purchased recommended hardware. In fact, we purchased a workstation well over the minimum specifications so we know we’ll get great performance out of it.
The most arduous process of building this workstation so far consisted of two issues, the first one was getting XP installed on the HP workstation (see the JS PACS Article on PACS Workstation troubleshooting) and the other was getting the license. The license acquisition wasn’t difficult, just took some time getting an account on the GE licensing system and the registering the Centricity serial number that I had received in order to generate the license.
With the workstation up and running and the license file in hand, it was rather trivial to install the cardiology software. I have gotten it all installed and configured but I haven’t given it the true test of sending DICOM images to the workstation. I am not that worried about that portion of the testing however because from this point, it is just a tweaking of the settings.
The most important aspect of this process for me was a re-affirmation of the fact that an organization really can be successful in building its own workstations and software only solutions can be a viable part of the strategy to maintain workstations and keep them all refreshed. The biggest advantage to purchasing, building and maintaining your own workstations is that you can shop for the best prices, standardize your workstations with regards to hardware and align the software to your organizations overall strategy (virus protection etc.).
To comment on this article or let the JS PACS community know how you manage your workstations, visit the Discussion Forum.
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