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Challenges
This Trust had long relied on IT solutions to help manage patient information, particularly medical image files, however, the growing volumes and sizes of image files were an increasing burden on the Trust’s storage infrastructure. Clinicians were forced to wait up to 24 hours to gain access to medical images, which delayed treatment decisions. Compounding the challenge was the difficulty of sharing information across multiple Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). To improve the quality of care, increase productivity and reduce costs, the Trust needed to move to an integrated solution for managing and sharing medical images to optimise patient care.
Solution
The SynApps Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) solution enables the Trust to create a secure clinical portal that pulls data from multiple systems in multiple formats stored in their Documentum ECM platform. The data can now be accessed directly from any of the PACS systems connected to the VNA or from the VNA portal, which offers a simple web interface, allowing clinicians to view patient information anywhere, on any device. When new medical images are generated by radiology, cardiology or other departments, they can view all the patient data directly in the VNA. As a result, images can be accessed within three seconds, a significant improvement over the old process.
Project Success
When the Trust moved from their PACS provider, the implementation of the SynApps VNA and SynApps implementation approach meant that the subsequent migration was de-risked, data migration to the new PACS was faster and data was far cleaner.
The migration phases of the project involved 30TB of Radiology DICOM data covering 1.8M studies and 20TB of Cardiology Dicom covering 80,000 studies. The VNA based on the ECM platform now contains over 150TB of content (300M images) increasing by over 400,000 new studies each year.
The trust also successfully implemented a paper free medical record scanning solution based on this same ECM platform. This has further broadened the scope of patient data held within the platform. Clinicians now have immediate access to a broad range of DICOM and Non-DICOM content. This Medical Record archive has since grown to a size that nearly equals that of the original DICOM dataset over the last 2 years.
In addition, the trust has successfully integrated new free-standing Theatre Stackers (Endoscopy and Orthopaedic) directly with the VNA to provide for the archiving of the imaging data generated. This has provided clinicians across the trust with access to the data without needing to access the imaging devices directly.
The SynApps Difference
SynApps’ Vendor Neutral Archive provides a single view of the complete patient record by storing medical images, secure patient records and all other content in a standard format and interface, making them accessible to healthcare professionals. It is built on an open, standards-based enterprise content management platform, so it can be used to securely store and organise all kinds of content – not just medical images. It can also be integrated with any number of different applications and data sources too, including electronic patient records (EPRs).
