Low-cost nationwide medical imaging storage

ASSE is the largest Uruguayan health services provider. Being State owned, it has national coverage, serving 38% of our population. This work describes ASSE´s initiative to provide a nationwide PACS. This paper represent ongoing work, with a clear roadmap and interesting intermediate results. Levels of fault tolerance, availability and reliability of the solution are outstanding while assembling entry level hardware components, open/free software and existing communications infrastructure. Different architectural options are discussed and key practical lessons are presented. Short and mid-term challenges for successful organization imaging success are presented too.