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Growth of hospital image sharing network good news for patients
Chesterfield Royal Hospital has become the sixth NHS Trust in the East Midlands to go live with a system that allows the region’s hospitals to share patient images, scans and x-rays regardless of which hospital they were taken in.
From Monday 9th November Chesterfield Royal Hospital joins 5 other members of the East Midlands Imaging Network (EMRAD) already using the system including Nottingham University Hospitals, Sherwood Forest Hospitals, Kettering General Hospital, Northampton General Hospital and United Lincolnshire Hospitals.
Known as the PACS Portal, the cloud-based image sharing system is good news for patients, allowing clinicians to access scans and images from other trusts, in real time and at a distance, to make critical decisions about a patient’s care quickly and safely. This has obvious benefits in cases of life-threatening conditions, major traumas and strokes. The management of cancer patients between experts from different hospitals will also now be improved by the system.
Dr James Thomas, Medical Director of EMRAD said: “We’re delighted to welcome Chesterfield Royal Hospital onto our region-wide image sharing system. It’s fantastic news for patients, especially in the north Midlands, as their medical images and scans will now be instantly available to clinicians across the region. From this week, if a patient from the Chesterfield area needs to be brought to the QMC, their scans and images can arrive in Nottingham before they do, allowing clinicians to get a head start on assessing their condition and planning their care. We know that the image sharing portal is already speeding up and improving clinical decision-making, which will improve patient care”.
Penny Storr, EMRAD Programme Director, adds: “It is a pleasure to welcome Chesterfield Royal Hospital to EMRAD’s region-wide image sharing system. This is now our 7th successful go-live, and we could not have achieved this without the continuing support from all our Radiology Workforce across EMRAD. It has been a 7 year journey of collaboration, innovation and challenges, and to see all this work is being adopted across the NHS as an Imaging Network model benefiting all patients is testament to the strength and commitment of everyone in EMRAD”.
David Labajo, VP Commercial, Europe, GE Healthcare Digital said: “In a time when healthcare is stretched to capacity, solutions need to enable a hospital to be more efficient and to be beneficial to both the caregivers and the patients. The addition of Chesterfield Royal Hospital to the regional PACS Solution is a great milestone for EMRAD, and helps strengthen their capacity as a radiology imaging provider”.
Anoop Unnikrishnan, Chesterfield Royal Hospital Divisional Director for the Integrated Care Division said: “This is a wonderful achievement for the Trust and will ensure that our radiologists and those involved in supporting diagnostic care will be able to complement each other and draw on each other’s expertise as part of a collaborative approach.
“It means that we will be able to reach clinical decisions in a more informed and timely manner, share information about patients who have perhaps visited different local hospitals for the purpose of a diagnosis more effectively which will lead to a faster diagnosis, swifter treatment plan and better outcome for the patient”
The ability of our region’s hospitals to share images in this way is great news for many patients but particularly those who have suffered a major trauma, a stroke or spinal injury.
Dr Richard O’Neill, a Consultant Radiologist at NUH, has first-hand experience of the power of the PACS image sharing portal: “I was called at midnight by the team at Pilgrim Hospital in Lincoln. They needed me to review a patient who had just had a scan there and looked to be in serious trouble. From my home in Nottingham, at midnight I was able to log in to the PACS portal, access the Lincoln system and review the patient’s images, to make a real time decision on the best course of action for that patient, which was to be transferred to the QMC. For clinicians this is a huge step forward and an incredibly powerful tool, and one that could save lives”.