DCM4CHEE PACS and WEASIS Viewer for a large hospital What are the cons

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DCM4CHEE PACS and WEASIS Viewer for a large hospital What are the cons

Posted by jlbergamaschi on March 21, 2021 at 11:27 pm

Dear All,

We are in the process of procuring a PACS to one of the hospital where daily procedure count is between 400 to 600.
This includes the average 30 no of CTs and 20 no of MRIs per day, along with Xray, Mammogram and Ultrasound.
Please any one point me the disadvantages of using dcm4chee PACS as the main PACS and Weasis as the Viewer for such an environment.

All comments are welcome.

Thanks and Regards,
Mathew Shaan

jlbergamaschi replied 3 years, 11 months ago 4 Members · 10 Replies
10 Replies

uhuman_p_770

Member
March 22, 2021 at 10:33 am

Mathew
My biggest concerns would be
[ul][*]Lack of professional support for the sotware, It is open source and community supported but there are no professional services.[*]DCM4CHEE is java based so there’s some odd issues with licensing and scaling could be difficult[*]WEASIS is not clinically approved in the US. [/ul] Hope this helps.
Prodigy Technician
[link=https://www.prodigyit.com]https://www.prodigyit.com[/link]
- jlbergamaschi
  
  Member
  March 23, 2021 at 1:56 pm
  
  Thanks for the reply.
  So, if there is no professional service required and if the hospital is outside of US, can I assume that DCM4CHEE and WEASIS are sufficient for a hospital ?
  Is there any one already running such a set up with DCM4CHEE and WEASIS?
  
  Thanks and regards,
  Mathew
  - eveisenb
    
    Member
    March 23, 2021 at 3:00 pm
    
    Even if you’re not in the US, your jurisdiction likely has regulations related to medical devices, and a PACS is likely classified as a medical device, and you may get in hot water using an unapproved product. Some open source products have forks that have been certified (if I recall, Osirix viewer is certified, Horus isn’t) but I don’t know about DCM4CHEE.
    
    Putting aside the issue of whether it is a good idea to use an unapproved product, without a vendor, you’re going to be responsible for staying up-to-date (including validating updates), ensuring you are using the product in a supported configuration, etc.
    
    I come from a vendor background (but am not currently a vendor). I think of a vendor as a form of insurance and risk transfer for an institution. You pay more than rolling your own, but they take on the risk of ensuring a functional, safe, compliant product.
    - niklaskaspar2
      
      Member
      March 23, 2021 at 4:49 pm
      
      I believe Raster Images provides some kind of professional install/support for DCM4CHE in Asia/Middle East: [link=https://www.raster.in/]https://www.raster.in/[/link]
    - jlbergamaschi
      
      Member
      March 23, 2021 at 10:14 pm
      
      Thanks for the reply.
      I understood the problem with unapproved product with in a vendor-less environment.
      I was also looking at the open issues of DCM4CHEE and it seems like there are 135 open issues, which is bit worrisome.
      
      I am going to believe that, unless there is a professional support, installing DCM3CHEE and WASIS is not good idea.
      
      Thanks and Regards,
      Mathew
      - niklaskaspar2
        
        Member
        March 24, 2021 at 4:04 am
        
        DCM4CHEE is generally considered a mature and high quality PACS system and is in use at many medium and large hospitals. PACS is a complex healthcare IT system though and you need to have adequate support in place for it – either via a third party professional support contract or internal resources that have the appropriate training and skills to manage it.
        
        jlbergamaschi
        
        Member
        March 25, 2021 at 4:57 am
        
        Thanks for the reply about DCM4CHEE.
        What about WEASIS, Is it also mature enough to use it in a busy hospital.
        
        uhuman_p_770
        
        Member
        March 25, 2021 at 10:16 am
        
        Weasis is quite a mature product and very good for what it is, a free dicom viewing software. However in regards to clinical use it does miss some functionality that radiologists generally want. Items like spine labeling, 3D reconstruction. Annotation saving etc are not there. I wouldn’t recommend it for radiologists but definitely it’s very usable for referrings and technicians. The only other thing I would caution regarding weasis is that it’s java based as well and there “could” be some licensing ramifications with regard to deploying it across an enterprise . However that depends on the java implementation you decide to use.
        Prodigy Technician
        [link=https://www.prodigyit.com/]https://www.prodigyit.com[/link]
        
        niklaskaspar2
        
        Member
        March 26, 2021 at 7:17 am
        
        On the viewer side, take a look at OHIF which is an open source zero foot print viewer that integrates with any DICOMweb archive (including DCM4CHEE):
        
        [link=https://ohif.org/]https://ohif.org/[/link]
        
        jlbergamaschi
        
        Member
        March 28, 2021 at 5:32 am
        
        Thanks a lot for the reply. I will look into it