RADIOLOGY
is generated, before notifying the referring clinician the same day when a patient is positive.” Patients are also being notified more quickly and discharged sooner when they don’t have bowel cancer. Traditionally if a CTC scan, or virtual colonoscopy, doesn’t show signs of cancer, imaging joins a queue to be reported, before going through an administrative process that can take three to four weeks. A pilot programme at the Trust has seen this reduced to 16 days, simply by the radiologist sending a letter from the multi-disciplinary team (MDT) to the patient when the radiologist can see from the image that the patient doesn’t have cancer – something not traditionally done. Dr. Britton explained the Trust’s approach has resonated with the national ‘Getting It Right First Time’ programme: “If a patient knows straight away, they have faith in the service,” she says. “Getting this right from the beginning gives the patient confidence. This wouldn’t work with a system where the technology doesn’t load quickly enough.”
A big difference in breast care Breast radiologists have also found the technology has improved efficiency, as consultant radiologist, Dr. Seema Salehi-Bird, explained: “We can more easily look at every
aspect of a mammogram systematically and it is easier annotate areas for colleagues to look at. We no longer need to work across three specialist systems. All of this has made our work far more streamlined. We can more effectively present information to surgeons, allowing them to make important decisions and, in MDT, meetings we can bring up relevant images at the click of a button.”
Medical imaging archive in the cloud
Sectra has signed a contract for a region- wide multimedia archive as a cloud service with SWASH, a British consortium of NHS Trusts, which is expected to advance how hospitals share and access important diagnostic imaging. A new shared multimedia archive will also allow the Trusts to accelerate ambitions for initiatives including artificial intelligence. SWASH includes the NHS Trusts:
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, Isle of Wight NHS Trust, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust. Under the new arrangement, signed in August 2020, the Trusts will move from an existing vendor-neutral archive (VNA) to Sectra’s VNA to store imaging for the region.
“Moving to Sectra’s VNA will be a
big win. We will be able to administer, store and make available millions of images, of different types and from different disciplines, from hospitals across our region, all in a single place without the burden of having to manage infrastructure,” commented Mark Gardner, PACS manager at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. The arrangement will alleviate
traditional burdens placed on Trusts, freeing up significant resource and equipment from Trusts’ computer rooms, for which they have historically been individually responsible. Sectra will use its cloud to securely store the region-wide archive, and to host the existing solution for handling radiology images (PACS) – a tool already used by radiology professionals in the consortium to interrogate diagnostic images. Dr. Mark Griffiths, paediatric radiologist and clinical lead for the SWASH consortium, commented: “Linking with other regions
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is an important next step. Our strategy is to improve our visualisation of the whole patient pathway within SWASH and beyond. Using a standard for cross- community sharing will help us to better connect with other regional consortia. That will be a game changer – to not just see local imaging, but to understand imaging has occurred for patients who move across borders and services, and to be able to access that imaging myself as a clinician, without needing to ask someone else who might not be in the office at the time.” Having access to imaging in the new VNA is also expected to help the consortium make use of emerging artificial intelligence applications. “This creates a wealth of data for purposes such as AI,” said Dr. Griffiths. “Data for training algorithms needs to be appropriate and validated – and we won’t simply be throwing data at AI, but by having collective data source as a consortia, we can use our size to help with the validation and governance around using AI. And we anticipate that Sectra will provide multiple inputs from smaller AI suppliers, that will make it much easier for NHS Trusts within a consortia to utilise them.”
MAY 2021
Improving data integrity and strategic innovation Innovation with the PACS continues to pick up pace. Martin Dale, the Trust’s PACS manager, commented that, since working with Sectra, the increased stability and functionality of the PACS has seen a significant reduction in firefighting that has freed up more time within his team to focus
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