Professional Services Overview

Healthcare organizations generally do not have the luxury to interrupt patient care while a PACS or RIS is being installed. Any change, even beneficial change, has the potential of at best causing anxiety to the staff and at worst creating absolute havoc. CoActiv takes great pride in our superlative track record of bringing our customers on line and getting them up to speed with their new equipment, software and services on time, with minimal disruption to the day to day routine and of course within budget.

CoActiv staff engineers have many years of real world experience in IT and medical imaging. They have practical experience in data centers as well as imaging centers, hospitals, clinics and medical practices of all sizes.

Step One – Project Management and Transition Services

CoActiv Professional Services

Every situation has its own unique requirements and is handled accordingly. However, in every case, we conduct a site survey and review with the customer all the elements of the project. Expectations are articulated and responsibilities assigned. Often customer staff and third party vendors are involved; regardless, CoActiv Medical staff engineers provide both oversight and hands on as needed.

The majority of PACS, RIS/PACS and VNA installations today occur in active healthcare businesses and therefore managing transition plays a critical role in installing the system. CoActiv’s approach to any job includes identifying what will be changing and who will be affected. Historical patient information and images must be properly preserved, secured and if necessary, moved. CoActiv staff is highly competent in the performance of validated DICOM migrations and transference of patient records without the need for costly third party expertise. Network infrastructure and health is another area critical to optimized PACS performance. CoActiv has over 30 years of IT consulting and analysis experience and can provide a comprehensive network evaluation in the absence of an IT staff.

Step Two – Scheduling

To complete all work within a mutually agreed schedule, CoActiv creates realistic implementation plans that encompass all factors in identifying an achievable “go live” date. Staying on schedule often relies on the full cooperation of other vendors as well as the customer’s staff. CoActiv maintains robust channels of communications with all parties.

Step Three – Staging

Most PACS have elements that require some assembly, configuration, software loading, database creation, burn in and testing before going “live”. CoActiv operations maintains strong relationships with suppliers and does an outstanding job procuring ancillary hardware and software in a timely manner. To minimize delays and distractions at the site, CoActiv performs much of this at our staging area in Brookfield, CT. During this pre-implementation period, validated DICOM migrations and transference of patient records to the RIS are scheduled to be done. It is also during this period that any special engineering or software development is implemented and fully tested before release to a customer.

Step Four – Installation

Benefitting from information previously gathered at project planning sessions and site surveys as well as the staging work, the actual placement of hardware and initiating the application software is a very quick process and always done with oversight by CoActiv staff engineers.

Step Five – Implementation and Training

Once everything is in place the “cut over” or “go live” is highly anticipated but does not occur until the users have had orientation, training and some dry run experience. All is done at the convenience of the end user whether during the day, the evening or on a weekend. Experience dictates that no amount of initial training answers all questions or covers all scenarios, so CoActiv staff engineers remain available 24 x 7 x 365 for Q&A sessions, assistance and supplemental training as needed.

Step Six – Ongoing Support

CoActiv support staff and management are consistently praised by customers for their availability and responsiveness. Regardless of system size and complexity, CoActiv software licensing and support agreements always include unlimited access to support resources. Our support line is staffed 24 x 7 x 365 and a qualified technician is always on call.