In a recent special report I wrote for Imaging Technology News (June 2007), I argued that a well-written RFP was still the best way to chose a replacement PACS. Today’s Radiology PACS is not a commodity, as many vendor’s would have you believe. And just because you have the experience of that first PACS behind you, the choice of the best PACS for the Health System is still tricky. Frankly, the PACS vendors have gotten very good at obfuscating the truth about their technology. They have become very good at word smithing, creating a dazzling array of acronyms and techno-speak to avoid answering the hard questions with the truth. Only a well-written RFP can break through all the marketing and sales blather and get to the truth about the features supported and their underlying technology.
Take DICOM conformity for example. If there is so much conformity to the standard in today’s PACS, as the vendors would have you believe, then why is it so difficult to exchange the complete set of study data between different PACS? Why is building a multi-PACS Enterprise Archive such a difficult undertaking?
In the ITC article, I have suggested 10 key issues that a PACS selection committee should understand completely if they are going to select a “good” PACS that will be the “best” fit to the radiology department.
If you insist on writing your own RFP, I offer three suggestions. Create a list of questions that focus on the issues, features and functions that are truly important. Think differentiation. Write the questions in such a way as to evoke responses that will differentiate products, not confirm the obvious. Lastly, think well-written. Write the RFP questions using concise and unambiguous wording, so the respondee cannot possible misinterpret. Better yet, provide your own multiple choice responses and instruct the vendor to pick the one that most closely resembles their response.
Today’s PACS may look straightforward from the radiologist’s perspective, but the devil is in the details. A well-written RFP is the only way to mine the truth.