Choose a DICOM router by testing the imaging pathway you need to operate. A feature list is useful, but the decisive questions are whether your studies reach the intended destinations, retain their clinical context and remain manageable when something goes wrong.
List modalities, PACS, VNAs, workstations, AI services and receiving organisations. Collect available conformance statements and interface specifications. Include less common objects such as structured reports, presentation states, radiotherapy data or whole slide images where relevant.
Write down which studies should go where and why. Include copies to multiple destinations, scheduled routes, prior retrieval, transformations and any preparation required before AI processing. Ask the supplier to demonstrate representative decisions using your requirements.
Establish the authoritative patient and order identifiers, then trace them through each hand-off. Test mismatches, corrections and report return. If HL7 or FHIR is involved, confirm the actual messages, resources and mappings rather than relying on a standards logo.
Ask what happens when a destination is unavailable, a connection drops or a study is incomplete. Request a demonstration of how operators identify an exception, investigate delivery and reconcile the result. Agree ownership of monitoring, support and recovery.
Use realistic study sizes, object types and concurrent transfers. Record the hardware, network, source and destination constraints alongside results. Published throughput numbers are only meaningful when the test conditions resemble the environment you intend to run.
Record the workflows, validation evidence and responsibilities required for sign-off. Ask about licensing, hosting, implementation, interface changes, upgrades, support and exit arrangements. Confirm the proposed product and deployment match the evidence supplied.
An end-to-end study transfer, a routing decision, a required transformation, a destination failure and recovery, and confirmation that the receiving system can retrieve and interpret the result.
Give each supplier the same workflow, object types, volumes and acceptance criteria. Compare the demonstrated outcome, operational effort, integration responsibilities and total proposed costs.
Tell us about your organisation, existing systems and the outcome you need. We’ll help map the next step.