KLAS Research, a healthcare market research firm, has released its 2024 Best in KLAS report, which includes sections for radiology PACS, speech recognition, universal viewers, image exchange software and vendor neutral archives (VNA).

KLAS reports aim to measure what is happening with vendor products by interviewing clinician end-users. KLAS said the report is not a perfect sample size and does not include all vendors, but it offers hospitals a reliable reference for purchasing decisions. The report covers more than 1,000 health informatics solutions used across health systems.

Here are some highlights:

Best PACS for large health system

In the PACS product category for large healthcare centers with more than 300,000 studies per year, the Best in KLAS product was Sectra, which it has earned several years in a row. The list in order of overall performance score:

   • Sectra PACS, 88.6
   • Merative, Merge PACS, 80.3
   • Fujifilm Synapse, 75.8
   • Agfa Healthcare, Enterprise Imaging for Radiology, 75.6
   • Change Healthcare Radiology Solutions, 74.8
   • Intelerad, 60.5
   • GE Healthcare Centricity PACS, 56.5

About 98% of Sectra users said they would buy the product again and they have long-term plans with this vendor. 

The end-user surveys showed Sectra increased its overall score by 2% from last year. Agfa remained the same. The rest of the vendors had their scores drop between 4%-7% from last year. 

Intelerad and GE both had an F grade for culture and value. GE had an additional F for loyalty and Intelerad an extra F for relationship. Both also performed poorly on grades for operations and product.

KLAS gathered information on five other PACS in this category, but the organization did not have enough data for an apples-to-apples comparison with the other vendors. These included:

   • Infinitt PACS, 91
   • Philips Vue PACS (Carestream), 65.3
   • Philips IntelliSpace PACS (not its primary PACS), 63.7

Best PACS for small health systems

The small PACS market is classified as healthcare organizations with less than 300,000 studies per year. The Best in KLAS product was once again Sectra, with users all saying they would buy the product again and expected to include Sectra in long-term plans.

The list of all vendors included in interviews in order of overall performance scores:

   • Sectra PACS, 91
   • Agfa, Enterprise Imaging for Radiology, 90.2
   • Fujifilm Synapse, 83
   • Merative, Merge PACS, 82.1
   • Change Healthcare Radiology Solutions, 79.4
   • Infinitt PACS, 79.3
   • Konica Minolta Exa PACS, 72.3
   • Philips Vue PACS (Carestream), 70.8
   • GE Healthcare Centricity PACS, 69.4  

At the top of the list, compared to last year's rankings, Sectra increased its score 2% and Agfa by 13% over 2023. Maritime also saw a 5% increase in its score. 

Vendors that saw the largest decline in ratings were Konica Minolta, declining 7%, and Philips, which dropped 15% from last year's scores. The bottom three PACS vendors did not score well in the areas of culture, loyalty or relationship with the providers. GE ranked the lowest in terms of value, according to end-users.

Agfa and Merge also ranked very high, with 95% of their users saying they are happy with these vendors and plan to keep them as part of their long-term plans. Agfa users also said the vendor kept all of its promises 95% of time, the highest ranking among all the PACS vendors.

Four other PACS were mentioned, but not included in the overall rankings because KLAS did not have enough information. These included:

   • Intelerad IntelePACS, 69.5
   • Philips IntelliSpace (not used as a primary system), 76.9

PACS market insights from KLAS

In the KLAS market report PACS 2023 Consolidation & Replacements of Aging & Legacy Systems Drive Market Shifts, the authors noted the following key trends:

   1. Sectra leads the market in considerations and selections of new PACS systems.
  
   2. One in three Philips IntelliSpace PACS customers are looking to move to Vue PACS amid migration challenges. GE HealthCare saw many replacements of its system with few serious considerations from new buyers.

   3. Visage Imaging gained significant momentum among large health systems.

   4. Change Healthcare and Fujifilm were highly considered by both large and small organizations, but selected less frequently.

   5. Intelerad and Agfa HealthCare saw moderate purchase energy and replacements in 2023. Merative had less energy as the market waits to see the results of its recent acquisition by a new owner. 

   6. Infinitt was considered and selected by small organizations more often than large healthcare groups.

Speech recognition software for radiology

For radiology speech recognition platforms, 3M MModal Fluency was named the Best in KLAS product, although the other two vendors in the surveys also performed very well. 

The vendors overall performance scores were:

   • 3M MModal Fluency for Imaging, 88.8
   • Nuance PowerScribe 360/One, 87.9
   • Dolbey Fusion Expert, 83.5

All users of the Dolbey solution said the vendor kept all promises made. Users also said they were very likely to buy again the products from Nuance and 3M. 

Top radiology image exchange software 

In the category of image exchange software, three vendors were included and Nuance ranked Best in KLAS this year. The overall performance rankings were:

   1. Agfa HealthCare, Enterprise Imaging XERO Viewer, 85
   2. Visage Imaging, Visage 7, 84.9
   3. Merative, Merge Universal Viewer, 84.3
   4. Mach7 Technologies, eUnity, 82.3
   5. GE HealthCare Universal Viewer, 65.1

Four other image exchange vendors were mentioned, but not included in the overall rankings because KLAS did not have enough information. These included:

   • Fujifilm, Synapse Mobility, 83.3
   • Philips, Enterprise Viewer Vue Motion (Carestream), 82.1
   • Hyland, NilRead, 73.2

Rankings for VNAs

Health systems use VNAs to store the vast amounts of imaging data created each year. The Best in KLAS vendor was again Fujifilm. The overall rankings of the vendors included in this research were:

  1. Fujifilm Synapse VNA (TeraMedica), 86.7
  2. Merative iConnect Enterprise Archive, 80.3
  3. GE Healthcare Centricity Clinical Archive Solution, 76.3
  4. Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging VNA, 74.1
  5. Hyland Acuo, 73.7
  6. Mach7 Technologies, Mach7 VNA, 75.7

The most notable change in scores according to KLAS was Mach7, dropping 13% from its score last year. This continues a downward slide, when the vendor's scores dropped 6% from 2022. Mach7 received the only grade of F among the VNA vendors for culture, and had a grade of D+ for loyalty, operations and product.

Fujifilm scored high with users, who said they are including the vendor in future planning and because the vendor avoids charging for every little thing.

Three other vendors not ranked because of limited data included:

   • Philips Enterprise Repository Vue Archive (Carestream), 78.4
   • Sectra VNA, 94.6  

How are the best in KLAS Health IT vendor rankings created? Click here to find out.