A radiology patient portal is the login where a patient opens their own studies and reports: a browser DICOM viewer, the report text, sometimes appointments and a message thread. It is not a PACS. It is not an EHR. It is not a PYCAD product.
If you meant the archive the portal reads from → PACS and DICOM. If you meant the hospital stack (PACS / RIS / viewer) → medical imaging software. If you meant EHR / chart interop → EHR interoperability. If you meant the radiology worklist → radiology workflow optimization.
PYCAD builds custom web DICOM viewers — the imaging piece a portal can embed. It does not ship a patient portal, a dashboard, or a messaging suite.
What the portal actually is
The old hop was: wait for a call, pick up a CD, hope the next specialist’s workstation can read it. A portal is the same study on a URL the patient can open. The file still lives on the PACS. The portal is a window, not a second archive.
Four pieces show up on almost every real build. None of them is a slogan.
| Piece | Job | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Browser DICOM viewer | Render the patient’s CT / MRI / X-ray in a browser. Window-level, a simple cine. No fat client. | Not a radiologist workstation. Not a second PACS. |
| Report + appointments | The signed report, upcoming slots, sometimes a message to the desk. | Not a diagnosis chatbot. The report is still a person. |
| Integrations | PACS for pixels, RIS for the order, EHR for the rest of the chart. | Not a sidecar login that staff re-type into. |
| Access control | Identity, a timeout, an audit trail. HIPAA is the constraint, not a badge. | Not “cloud = secure.” |
A portal that cannot talk to the PACS is a brochure. A viewer that cannot read the study the archive actually stores is how tools die. Burning CDs is the failure mode this layer is supposed to kill.
Three languages, one record
The portal is a composition. It speaks whatever the systems behind it speak.
| Standard | What it carries | In a portal |
|---|---|---|
| DICOM | Pixels plus the tags (who, which series, which window) | The viewer. DICOMweb (WADO-RS) if you are not VPN-ing a fat client |
| HL7 v2 | Orders, ADT, the old RIS/EHR hop | Still how a lot of appointments and reports actually move |
| FHIR | Modern, resource-shaped chart data | Demographics, the report as a DocumentReference, the rest of the chart |
DICOM is not “the JPEG of medicine.” It is the envelope that keeps the pixels attached to the patient. HL7/FHIR are how the portal knows the appointment exists. Mixing them up is how you ship a pretty login that shows the wrong study. The handshake itself is PACS and DICOM, not a second portal article.
What this page is not
- Not a PYCAD portal. We do not sell one. If a clinic’s portal needs a web DICOM viewer inside it, that is the imaging piece.
- Not an EHR. The chart lives elsewhere. The portal is the patient-facing cut of imaging + the report.
- Not “AI that explains your MRI.” A plain-language summary of a signed report is a product choice. A model that re-reads the study for the patient is a different (and regulated) job.
- Not a market-size slide. Dropped.
If the work is a viewer that has to live inside someone else’s portal, that is the imaging piece. Case studies.