In line with the Lower Saxony integration model, the "Universitätsmedizin Göttingen (UMG)" unites the Faculty of Medicine and the University Hospital under one roof. Together with the University of Göttingen, the UMG has been run in the legal form of a foundation university since 2003.
For the past three years, the UMG has been laying the foundations with increased intensity to record digital data in a structured electronic context for all professional groups of the health professions of the UMG and to make it available for presentation and evaluation. Central building blocks at UMG are the implementation of a clinical workstation system (KAS) since the beginning of 2019 and the introduction of a radiology information system (RIS) since the end of 2020.
A larger gap with regard to the foundation for digital-based decision support in the clinical context arises at UMG in the area of archiving and the exchange of data from imaging techniques (PACS). In the course of the introduction of the KAS and the new RIS, which has begun, it has become clear that UMG's existing PACS solution causes major interface and interoperability problems
The existing PACS at UMG has been used for image archiving for over 14 years. Ensuring functioning interfaces of the PACS to portals (with regard to KHZG funding element 2) or other systems in the long term is no longer given in the existing PACS solution. Even manageable renewals are disproportionately difficult for UMG and further IHE integration is not implemented. In addition, the existing PACS solution at UMG is not prepared for integration with Digital Pathology, which was set up at the end of 2020.
The aim of the University Medical Center Göttingen is to create the basis for clinical decision support in the imaging disciplines by setting up a consolidated manufacturer-neutral interoperable archive for image data (Vendor Neutral Archive or VNA), reporting within the PACS solution (In-PACS reporting) for specialist departments that do not have their own subject-specific reporting solutions, as well as the clinic-wide consideration of objects from the VNA.