Frequently Asked Questions
1. How long does a typical PACS migration take?
Each migration timeline is unique, but we start by conducting a thorough assessment of three key variables: archive size, network bandwidth, and the level of clinical validation you require. For a mid-size hospital with 50–100 TB of data, our phased methodology—extract, transform, bulk load, and delta sync—usually completes in 8–16 weeks. Larger multi-site health systems may extend to 4–6 months if data exceeds the petabyte threshold or if legacy archives contain orphaned studies that require manual reconciliation.
To keep your imaging services online, we schedule high-volume data moves during off-peak hours and perform rolling cutovers modality by modality. Our dedicated project manager publishes a live Gantt chart and weekly status reports so your stakeholders always know which milestones have been reached and what remains. By front-loading risk assessment and hardware provisioning, we routinely meet or beat go-live dates while maintaining 99.9 % system availability.
2. Can you integrate with my existing EMR and RIS?
Absolutely. Vendor diversity is the norm in U.S. healthcare, so our engineering team is fluent in Epic, Cerner, Meditech, Allscripts, Athenahealth, GE Centricity RIS, and more. We maintain a library of pre-built HL7 ADT/ORM/ORU interface templates as well as FHIR resources, which allows us to cut development time by up to 40 %. If your environment has proprietary APIs or legacy TCP/IP interfaces, we reverse-engineer the message structure, then normalize data in our integration engine before delivering it to your PACS or downstream systems.
The result is a bidirectional interface where orders flow to modalities in real time, images auto-attach to the correct encounter, and finalized radiology reports populate the EMR without manual copy-paste. Our validation phase includes end-to-end transaction tracing, so IT leadership and clinical staff can verify that every ADT admit, every accession number, and every report status travels exactly where it should.
3. Do you offer on-site support during go-live?
Yes. While many issues can be resolved remotely, having boots on the ground during the critical go-live window adds a layer of assurance that virtual support alone can’t match. Our cutover team typically arrives 48 hours before the switchover to confirm network readiness, finalize authentication configurations, and conduct last-minute user acceptance testing.
During go-live, at least one PACS engineer and one clinical workflow specialist remain on-site (or within a secure remote session, if public-health protocols require) to triage any anomalies—whether that’s a modality connection glitch or a physician who needs help finding historical priors. Once system stability is confirmed, we transition to hybrid support: remote monitoring through our NOC with rapid on-site dispatch available under the terms of your SLA.
4. How do you secure patient data during migration?
Security starts well before the first byte is moved. We create a dedicated VPN tunnel or private MPLS link between source and destination, protected by multifactor authentication and strict firewall rules. All data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.3 and encrypted at rest with AES-256-bit keys managed within an HSM.
We also implement checksum validation to detect bit-level corruption, and we maintain immutable logs that satisfy audit requirements from HIPAA and HITRUST. Temporary staging servers used for data transformation are isolated behind a segmented VLAN and are subject to an automated data-wipe policy immediately after final validation. You receive a complete security dossier—including penetration-test results, encryption certificates, and wipe verification reports—so your compliance officers have full chain-of-custody documentation.
5. What happens after the project is finished?
Post-implementation, you can select from three support tiers:
- Essential: Business-hours help desk, quarterly system health checks, and access to our knowledge base.
- Advanced: 24/7 monitoring, proactive patching, guaranteed four-hour response time, and annual disaster-recovery drills.
- Premium Managed Services: All Advanced features plus capacity planning, performance tuning, regulatory reporting, and an assigned Customer Success Manager who meets with you monthly to review KPIs.
Regardless of tier, you’ll have access to our client portal, where you can open tickets, track SLA metrics, and download compliance documentation. Our average time-to-resolution across all clients is currently 37 minutes for severity-1 incidents.
6. Are your services compliant with U.S. regulations?
Yes. We operate under a rigorous Compliance Management System aligned with:
- HIPAA 164 Subparts C & E for security and privacy.
- HITRUST CSF v9.6 controls, independently audited every year.
- NIST 800-53 Rev 5 for security and privacy controls.
- Joint Commission IM standards for information management.
- ONC 21st Century Cures Act interoperability and information blocking rules.
Our legal team executes Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with all covered entities, and our project documentation includes Data Protection Impact Assessments, Secure Development Lifecycle artifacts, and chain-of-custody logs. Together, these safeguards ensure your imaging environment remains compliant today and ready for whatever the regulatory landscape brings tomorrow.
