A number of Trusts and private healthcare providers have shared news that the vernable image transfer service still used for a good number of EPR system, sport venue and international private transfers is being shuttered next month following Stephen Gatley’s retirement.
PACSmail was developed and deployed in the same generation as bbRad, prior to the dominance of the now commonplace IEP. PACSmail offered fixed price (pay per send) transactions and remained “best value” than other image transfer systems for those with urgent, but infrequent use needs. The enveloping system available was unique and allowed for more comprehensive collaboration than is possible with the remaining options on the UK market.
With suitably secure end-to-end encryption now possible on many cloud services at no cost, the alternative to PACSmail may be to simply upload an .iso of the exported images (using the Windows 10/11 .iso native mount option) to organisational cloud storage and emailing a link. The recipient can then download a single file, ‘mount’ this natively in Windows and view as if it were a CD, with the M365 audit trails providing suitable logs. A handful of Trusts have already set up cloud locations on their Microsoft365 tenants to allow this and report it working well.
Alternatively IEP offers a ‘Tier 1’ subscription, but has a greater joining fee and annual usage subscription when compared to PASCmail costs - IEP is a ‘buy in bulk’ subscription service.
Stephen’s PACSmail service enabled image sharing in the early years of the National Programme and it’s closure now ends its historic part in enabling the early years of cross-organisational working.
The full notice sent out to users is attached below for any who have missed it.
PACSMail Closure Notice Update 2nd December 2024
After 20 years of supporting your image communication requirements we have very reluctantly come to the sad decision to close Sybermedica and we are now in the process of an organised shut-down of the PACSMail service.
A formal email notice to this effect was sent giving two months’ notice with further details about managing data during the notice period. This means that you will continue to have normal access to PACSMail from now until the 2 January 2025, after which the server will be closed. Please ensure all your data is downloaded prior to this date as no further access will be possible.
Thank you for your support over the years. Please be as understanding as you can with us whilst we work with you in this transition period.