Inventory
Studies, series and images counted by modality and year, plus storage and the retention rules you have to keep.
PACS migration
Move your PACS with a plan for every study.
Replacing a PACS, consolidating archives or moving to the cloud: the migration is done when every study from the old system can be found and opened in the new one. We plan it, move it and check it, and account for every study that doesn't make it the first time.
Inventory, map, clean, transfer, validate, hand over
Data mapping
Patient IDs, accession numbers and DICOM tags mapped between systems, with tag morphing where vendors disagree.
Cleanup before copy
Duplicates, split patients and mismatched demographics found and resolved before they reach the new PACS.
Validation
Study counts reconciled between the old and new systems, failed items tracked and retried, and sample studies opened by a person, not just a script.
Priors and lifecycle
A plan for priors, so radiologists can compare against them after cutover, and lifecycle rules for every study so storage doesn't creep back up.
Cutover
Routing switched at a planned time, with a rollback plan if something fails.
How it goes
- 1
Scope call
What you're moving from and to, the volume, and the deadline.
- 2
Written plan
Inventory, mapping, validation checks and the cutover date, quoted up front.
- 3
Move and prove
The migration, a reconciliation report, and handover notes.
Experience behind it
From Felix Garcia's work before PACS Desk:
- Migrated more than 10 million studies, 16 years of data, from five PACS into one.
- Set prefetch and lifecycle rules for every modality in the consolidated system.
- Rolled out PACS and dictation across 17 facilities.
Questions
How long does a migration take?
It depends on volume and how fast the old system can export. You get a timeline with the written plan, after the inventory.
Can radiologists keep reading during the migration?
That's what the plan is built around: the current PACS stays in use until cutover, and new studies keep routing there until the switch.
What determines scope and cost?
How many studies and systems are involved, how fast the old system can export, how clean the data is, and whether reports and non-DICOM objects move too.
Can you consolidate PACS after an acquisition?
Yes. Merging several PACS into one is the same work at a larger scale: one patient index, one archive, one set of rules.
Related
PACS support
Independent PACS support for radiology practices and imaging centers: studies that don't arrive, missing priors, DICOM routing, modality worklist and HL7 errors, slow viewers, upgrades and vendor escalations.
Teleradiology IT
IT for teleradiology groups and remote radiologists: reading stations, diagnostic displays, remote PACS access, multi-site worklists, dictation and image loading. We keep the tools working; we don't provide reads.
Planning a migration?
Tell us what you're moving from and to, and roughly how much.