Inside the DICOM Toolkit: How Medical Imaging Actually Works | John Hally

If you work in medical imaging, DICOM is everywhere — even when you don’t see it.In this episode of Imaging Informatics Unplugged, Jason Nagels sits down with John Hally, Product Leader for Cloud and Technical Platforms at Merge, to break down what DICOM toolkits really do and why they matter more than ever as imaging expands beyond radiology.John brings over 15 years of medical imaging technical experience and more than a decade in product management, leading global strategy for the Merge VNA, DICOM and HL7 Toolkits, cloud platforms, and digital pathology. This conversation goes deep into the infrastructure that quietly powers interoperability across healthcare.What you’ll learn in this episode: • What a DICOM toolkit actually is (and what it isn’t) • Why AI vendors and new imaging startups often underestimate DICOM complexity • When organizations realize they need a toolkit instead of building DICOM from scratch • Open source vs commercial DICOM toolkits: tradeoffs, risk, and scalability • How cloud-native architectures, ARM processors, and containers are changing imaging platforms • Enterprise imaging beyond radiology: pathology, ophthalmology, scope video, and more • Why HTJ2K (High-Throughput JPEG 2000) is a big deal for large imaging datasets • How standards evolve and why “doing DICOM” doesn’t always mean doing it correctlyThis episode is essential listening for: • PACS administrators and imaging informatics professionals • AI companies entering healthcare imaging • Product managers and developers building imaging platforms • Clinical and technical leaders working on enterprise imaging strategies • Anyone preparing for CIIP or deepening their understanding of imaging standards👉 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications so you don’t miss future episodes of Imaging Informatics Unplugged.🚀 Keep an eye on nagelsconsulting.com for upcoming courses focused on imaging standards, enterprise imaging, and real-world interoperability. Some big things are coming.