Using OnePacs with a slow international connection
Using OnePacs with a slow international connection
What is the best way to set up OnePacs when only a slower international internet connection is available? What I would like to do is establish a dedicated workstation as a "Study Archive" to download studies from the OnePacs server in the US at regular intervals, say every 3 minutes. The Study Archive workstation then distributes downloaded studies to several Radiologist workstations for interpretation. Reports, when ready, are uploaded both to the OnePacs server in the US and also to the Study Archive workstation. Appreciate any advice you can provide on how this can be achieved.
Re: Using OnePacs with a slow international connection
WIth regards to downloading studies from the OnePacs servers only once, then distributing to several machines locally, there are a few possibilities.
One, we could offer a paid service to establish a server local to your facility that could be used instead of the usual OnePacs server clusters which are accessed through an international connection for you.
Two other possibilities also come to mind:
(A) If the radiologist workstations are on the same local network as the "archive PC", you could set up the archive PC with the usual onepacs study retriever software, and set up each of those workstations as a destination in the study retriever. See the following link: http://wiki.onepacsforums.com/doku.php? ... n_settings
Then, as studies are downloaded from the OnePacs server cluster by the archive PC, the archive PC will store those studies to each of the local destinations. If the PCs are not all on the same local network, you could use the Hamachi VPN solution to provide a virtual shared local network. See https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/.
(B) The other solution is a little more complex. If you prefer a pull methodology, whereby the radiologist workstations will all pull the studies as needed from the archive PC, rather than having the archive PC push the studies, you could do the following:
(a) Set the local IP address of the archive PC as the "local gateway" address in the facility. (Admin menu > Facilities, edit facility, enter the IP address of the archive PC in the "Gateway IP address" text edit field). The "local gateway" download feature was originally designed for when the transmitting gateway computer is on the same local network as the downloading workstation. It's a means of bypassing the OnePacs server cluster to speed up transmission in such cases. See http://wiki.onepacsforums.com/doku.php? ... retrconfig
(b) Install an instance of the OnePacs gateway software on the archive PC.
(c) Set the study download softwarte to store studies to the local instance of the OnePacs gateway
Since solution (B) is more complex than (A), I would recommend (A).
As far as storing reports locally is concerned, there isn't a direct way to have the reports stored on the archive PC as you mention. The OP system is designed for reports to be generally retrieved through the OP system web interface.
If you want to also keep local copies such that retrieval of reports wouldn't rely on having an active internet connection, off the top of my head, some options to achieve this would include:
(A) Working with us to set up an HL7 interface to store reports to a local RIS system
(B) Setting up a POP server on the archive PC to receive emails, and having the reports emailed to the server, using the email report feature of report transmission on OP. We could work with you to set up a secure encrypted channel for the email.
(C) At regular intervals, manually exporting the reports from OnePacs using the data export to spreadsheet feature of onepacs. As the reports would be exported along with patient demographics, etc., and it would be easy to look up specific reports for specific patients/studies in the local copy of the data.
If we have any other thoughts we'll post them.
One, we could offer a paid service to establish a server local to your facility that could be used instead of the usual OnePacs server clusters which are accessed through an international connection for you.
Two other possibilities also come to mind:
(A) If the radiologist workstations are on the same local network as the "archive PC", you could set up the archive PC with the usual onepacs study retriever software, and set up each of those workstations as a destination in the study retriever. See the following link: http://wiki.onepacsforums.com/doku.php? ... n_settings
Then, as studies are downloaded from the OnePacs server cluster by the archive PC, the archive PC will store those studies to each of the local destinations. If the PCs are not all on the same local network, you could use the Hamachi VPN solution to provide a virtual shared local network. See https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/.
(B) The other solution is a little more complex. If you prefer a pull methodology, whereby the radiologist workstations will all pull the studies as needed from the archive PC, rather than having the archive PC push the studies, you could do the following:
(a) Set the local IP address of the archive PC as the "local gateway" address in the facility. (Admin menu > Facilities, edit facility, enter the IP address of the archive PC in the "Gateway IP address" text edit field). The "local gateway" download feature was originally designed for when the transmitting gateway computer is on the same local network as the downloading workstation. It's a means of bypassing the OnePacs server cluster to speed up transmission in such cases. See http://wiki.onepacsforums.com/doku.php? ... retrconfig
(b) Install an instance of the OnePacs gateway software on the archive PC.
(c) Set the study download softwarte to store studies to the local instance of the OnePacs gateway
Since solution (B) is more complex than (A), I would recommend (A).
As far as storing reports locally is concerned, there isn't a direct way to have the reports stored on the archive PC as you mention. The OP system is designed for reports to be generally retrieved through the OP system web interface.
If you want to also keep local copies such that retrieval of reports wouldn't rely on having an active internet connection, off the top of my head, some options to achieve this would include:
(A) Working with us to set up an HL7 interface to store reports to a local RIS system
(B) Setting up a POP server on the archive PC to receive emails, and having the reports emailed to the server, using the email report feature of report transmission on OP. We could work with you to set up a secure encrypted channel for the email.
(C) At regular intervals, manually exporting the reports from OnePacs using the data export to spreadsheet feature of onepacs. As the reports would be exported along with patient demographics, etc., and it would be easy to look up specific reports for specific patients/studies in the local copy of the data.
If we have any other thoughts we'll post them.
Re: Using OnePacs with a slow international connection
Very interresting your question Paul.
And very goods and usefull asnwers to know more about the possibilities of a OnePacs based system.
Regards
Hilario
And very goods and usefull asnwers to know more about the possibilities of a OnePacs based system.
Regards
Hilario