The Clinical Content Store (CCS)

Move beyond the traditional EPR with an image-enabled and information- rich Patient
Record – the new SynApps Clinical Content Store, or CCS.

The Store will hold all your hospital’s medical images, including medical photography, vital patient information currently locked away in niche /departmental systems or in a read-only legacy system format – combining the best of new and old in one central, secure and easily searchable repository, easily accessed through any Web-based viewer.

The NHS needs to improve patient care through better access to patient data online, and by removing paper and technology silos. It also needs to start sharing information across the whole care pathway in or out of the hospital, as part of the move to integrating health and social care.

This is a task made more challenging by the large number of Read Only hospital IT or PACS systems in Trusts, that suffer from the twin evils of being highly complex and expensive to maintain whilst placing limits on viewing and sharing this information.

And all this is happening in a context of permanent financial constraint. We are in a post NPfIT world, with former Programme radiology and PACS outsourcing contracts at an end, forcing CCIOs to find new solutions to their data problems.

A proven response to these challenges is the consolidation of multi-department PACS silos into one Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA), which we are helping a growing number of Trusts do so they can better manage those complex, large DICOM image files.

VNA and beyond

But now it’s time to go beyond the VNA – and establish the Clinical Content Store – a place to start building powerful consolidated data repositories for not just those big radiology files but all your clinical and patient data, both structured and unstructured.

That’s because the Store will give you the ability to offer truly powerful content sharing, safe storage but also true management.

We’ve extended the VNA to do this as the ratio between structured (e.g. a letter from the patient’s GP, their CT scan or the picture of their bed sore) and structured clinical data is in the order is 80:20 – and while the EPR is a great way of helping you handle the 20%, it’s time you are better able to look after the 80%, too.

There are also huge savings on operational IT costs by going down this route, as you can also start winding down many older Clinical Systems and porting the data into the CCS.

For example, our customers tell us they are seeing a 70% reduction in the costs of keeping all their data in multiple systems when they’ve started using the CCS – and one Trust has estimated it is going to save them at least one million pounds per annum by not having to directly work with legacy systems any more.

It’s hard to disagree with the conclusion that now is the time to start using the CCS to move towards a Paperless NHS, consolidate patient data in one place, build a practical EPR – and save money that could be better spent by your institution on more direct patient care.

What a Clinical Content Store will do for your Trust:

  • Create a fully comprehensive, patient-centric view across organisational boundaries, based on patient data of multiple provenances and formats
  • Better manage inactive clinical application data; niche /departmental legacy systems can be switched off, removing a huge chunk of support and maintenance cost
  • Offer easy access to content like radiology files and patient notes in one central, scalable, non-proprietary, compliant archive via a Web-based interface
  • Allow clinicians and stakeholders to search still-relevant patient data from decommissioned applications
  • Provide a full audit process, ensuring that hospital or patient data can’t have been tampered with and that there is an unbroken ‘chain of custody’ from point of data extraction to any and all future usage
  • Standards based approach uniquely allowing wide sharing of previously locked away information across all care settings using XCA (Cross Community Access)
  • Proven enterprise-class technology (Health Information Platform from EMC).

Find out more about the CCS, why it matters and how it can help your Trust or healthcare delivery organisation meet the challenge of a Paperless NHS

We are currently offering a free consultative study to scope out the potential of CCS to meet your need, but be aware it is time-limited – so start talking to us today!