Novarad PACS and NovaPACS Alternatives for Community Hospitals and Imaging Centers

The short answer: Novarad PACS is NovaPACS EI, the enterprise imaging PACS from Novarad, a private, founder-led company in Provo, Utah that sells mostly to community, rural and critical access hospitals and imaging centers. Novarad publishes no price. It says upgrades are included at no charge on its evergreen model, it holds five FDA clearances for NovaPACS, and its federal footprint is a single $5,474.91 award. The PACS most often quoted against it are INFINITT, RamSoft and Intelerad, or you keep NovaPACS and add AI to the read.

Company facts come from novarad.net, Novarad press releases and trade press. FDA data is from the openFDA 510(k) and recall databases. Federal award figures are from USAspending.gov, award types A to D, fiscal 2008 to 2026, pulled September 30, 2026, with every row read by hand.

This page is for one reader: an imaging director, CIO or practice administrator at a smaller hospital or imaging center who has a NovaPACS renewal on the desk, or a Novarad quote next to two or three others. Search for Novarad PACS today and you get Novarad's own pages, reseller listings, a Gartner reviews stub and download links for the CD viewer. None of that helps you decide.

Who owns Novarad?

Novarad is privately held and run by its founder. Dr. Wendell Gibby, a neurointerventional radiologist, founded the company in 1988 by its own account (some business directories say 1990) and is still CEO. Headquarters is Provo, Utah; the American Fork address you will see on FDA filings from 2006 to 2018 is the old one. Business directories estimate about 180 staff.

We found no private equity deal, acquisition or funding round between 2020 and 2026. That matters more than it sounds. Intelerad changed hands three times in six years and now belongs to GE HealthCare; Merge went from IBM to Francisco Partners. A founder-run vendor gives you continuity and a short path to decision makers. It also gives you key-person risk and a smaller balance sheet, so your contract should still carry a data export commitment and a change-of-control clause.

How much does Novarad PACS cost?

Novarad does not publish a price, and its Capterra listing says "contact vendor for pricing." What Novarad does publish is the shape of the deal: NovaPACS EI is sold as evergreen, which the company says means all software upgrades are included at no charge, with US-based 24/7 support and disaster recovery included. It deploys in the cloud, on premises, at the edge or as a hybrid.

The federal record, which gives us real prices for most PACS vendors, is almost empty here. USAspending returns exactly one prime award naming Novarad: $5,474.91 from the Indian Health Service in Zuni, New Mexico, signed September 21, 2017, for "picture archiving" configuration work. There are no VA or Department of Defense awards, and a keyword search for NovaPACS returns nothing through resellers either.

So the honest answer is that nobody outside Novarad and its customers knows what NovaPACS costs, and anyone quoting you a figure from the internet is guessing. For benchmarks across vendors, PACS pricing and cloud PACS cost works from the federal awards that do exist and lists the five line items every PACS quote bundles. Use it to check the Novarad quote, not to predict it.

What should a NovaPACS quote include?

Because the price is negotiated, the quote is only as good as its line items. Ask Novarad to show each of these as a separate, priced line for the whole term:

• What "evergreen" covers in writing. Software upgrades are included by Novarad's own description. Ask whether that covers new modules such as the AI segmentation in NovaPACS EI 9.1 and MobileRad360, or only version updates of what you already license. Older reseller copy talks about hardware upgrades too; the current site does not, so get it in the contract if it matters to you.
• Hosting and storage growth. For a hosted or cloud deployment, the price per study or per terabyte after year one, and what happens when volume grows.
• Interfaces. Each HL7 or FHIR interface to your EHR, RIS and billing system. NovaPACS EI 9.1 lists Epic integration; ask whether yours is priced in.
• Migration out. The format, timeline and cost of getting your priors back if you leave. This is the line most buyers forget and most regret.
• Renewal uplift. A cap on annual support increases for years two onward.

Our guide to radiology software contract negotiation covers the rest of the terms that decide a five-year total.

Is NovaPACS FDA cleared?

Yes. openFDA lists five 510(k) clearances for NovaPACS, all product code LLZ: K061920 and K063153 in 2006, K132853 in 2014, K160371 in 2016 and K171754 in July 2017. Novarad also holds K172418 for OpenSight (2018), billed as the first FDA-cleared augmented reality system for Microsoft HoloLens, and K220146 for the VisAR surgical navigation system (2022). NovaRIS and the CryptoChart image-sharing product have no clearances, which is normal for a RIS and a sharing tool.

There have been four recalls, all Class II, all in the NovaPACS diagnostic viewer, and all now closed:

None was initiated after 2019. Compare Intelerad, which had four recalls still open when we checked in September 2026. A clean recent record is a real point in Novarad's favor, and it is still worth asking which version you run and whether every fix is installed.

Novarad vs INFINITT vs RamSoft vs Intelerad

If INFINITT or RamSoft is the other name on your shortlist, the INFINITT PACS system and what it costs and RamSoft PACS alternatives work through those quotes the same way, as does eRAD PACS and eRAD RIS alternatives for centers on the RadNet-owned system, and Intelerad PACS alternatives covers what changed under GE HealthCare. If the Novarad quote is up against a Konica Minolta X-ray bundle, Exa PACS alternatives explains what to unbundle. For the category as a whole, PACS software compared separates the deployment models.

What are the alternatives to Novarad PACS?

There are two kinds. The first is another PACS: for imaging centers and smaller hospitals that usually means INFINITT, RamSoft or Intelerad, with Sectra and Fujifilm Synapse showing up when a health system is involved. Switching PACS is a months-long project with a priors migration, new interfaces, new hanging protocols and retraining, so it only makes sense if the PACS itself is failing you.

The second is to keep NovaPACS and change what happens during the read. That is the right move when radiologists are fine with the viewer but the problem is volume: too many studies, urgent cases waiting behind routine ones, and hours lost to dictation. If you do move to a hosted PACS, from Novarad or anyone else, the web viewer becomes something your radiologists cannot read without, so set up independent uptime monitoring for the viewer and portal rather than learning about an outage from the night shift.

Can I add AI to NovaPACS without replacing it?

Yes. Novarad has added built-in AI segmentation in NovaPACS EI 9.1, and independent assistants read studies from any PACS over standard DICOM and send results back to the worklist. The radiologist keeps reading in NovaPACS; the assistant adds flags on suspected findings, reorders the worklist so urgent studies come first, and drafts the structured report for the radiologist to edit and sign.

That is what Radiological.ai does. It is decision support and the radiologist signs every report. Pricing is published per reading radiologist on our pricing page: $399 a month on the Practice plan or $199 a month billed annually, and $598 a month on the Group plan or $299 a month billed annually, with no image migration and a setup measured in days to weeks. For what connects to what, see how the assistant integrates with your PACS, and for the worklist side, radiology worklist prioritization.

Is Novarad a good PACS for a critical access hospital?

It is built for that buyer. Novarad markets NovaPACS EI from 500-bed hospitals down to 26-bed and critical access hospitals, bundles upgrades, support and disaster recovery, and recent public wins are exactly that profile: Ruby Valley Medical Center, San Carlos Apache Healthcare and OrthoAlaska in December 2024. The trade-off is a thin independent record, with no current public KLAS score, so ask for two references your size.