Bill Gregg is the PACS Administrator for the LSUHSC-S system, and the IT manager for the Department of Radiology. He has been working with PACS and Medical Informatics for 14 years, and has been in Information Technology for 25 years.

He holds a Masters Degree in Information Systems from LSU, and has been acknowledged by both PACS certification authorities with the Certified Imaging Informatics Professional (ABII) and the Certified PACS System Analyst (PARCA) titles.

He currently serves with the ABII Test Writing Committee, and was chosen to act as a Referee at the 2009 IHE Connectathon in Chicago. He will also serve as a docent at the IHE booth at the 2008 RSNA conference in Chicago. He participates on the functional committee created to provide integrated RIS/PACS/VR capabilities for the 10 Louisiana state hospitals.

Publications

Creating audit trails of human interactions within PACS based on the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) Audit Trail and Node Authentication (ATNA) profile.

Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires gathering audit information from picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) regarding evidence trails of human interactions

Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires gathering audit information from picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) regarding evidence trails of human interactions

Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires gathering audit information from picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) regarding evidence trails of human interactions. Until recently, most PACS users have had limited access to auditing information. Access required resources to handle manual inspection of audit logs, and access to proprietary databases was not always available. Some vendors now produce eXtensible Markup Language (XML) audit logs based on certain events occurring in PACS. However, it is up to the user to convert this information into an easily mined data repository supporting compliance and quality control. This process can be handled in multiple ways, which could mean different audit mechanisms depending on the PACS (or other hospital system) used. It is apparent that an organized method of dealing with audit information is needed. This help may be provided within the Integrating the Healthcare Environment (IHE) framework. The IHE initiative defines a set of profiles, actors, and transactions that create common scenarios for particular workflow processes. The Integration Profiles depict security as a fundamental requirement of the framework. Specifically, the Audit Trail and Node Authentication (ATNA) profile defines standards based mechanisms for securely transmitting and storing audit records in a central repository. The data structure defined by the profile provides a number of record types that capture different audit events. A general feasibility study for storing currently available PACS audit information following the profile is defined, and steps to an automated solution are discussed.