Tags: electronic patient record

Northampton General Hospital Chooses a SynApps Vendor Neutral Archive Content Store

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Northampton General Hospital South Entrance_1.0Northampton is the latest English NHS Trust convinced that a Vendor Neutral Archive is an essential route to a full Electronic Patient Record

Maidenhead, UK – 26 November, 2014 – Content management leader SynApps Solutions has today announced that Northampton General Hospitalhas selected its VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) solution to manage the repatriation of its PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) imaging library from National Programme for IT (NPfIT), systems.

SynApps will migrate the Trust’s image archive from the existing National Programme Accenture Agfa PACS platform by early 2015 to the SynApps Vendor Neutral Archive in order to bring the images back under the control of the Trust. This archive will be the long-term archive for the Trust and simplify and de-risk the subsequent move to a new PACS provider.

As the solution incorporates comprehensive XDS Repository/Registry cross-document sharing capabilities, clinicians will in the future be able to easily and safely share Patient Images, MRI and CT Scans etc. as well as other content, such as medical photography and reports with other healthcare organisations not just locally but potentially across the country.

Apart from saving cost and boosting efficiency by the move, the Trust sees the porting in-house of its patient image library as the first step towards using the VNA archive as part of its local, digital EPR (Electronic Patient Record) system. The solution will be the backbone for providing patients with the ability to view their patient record in line with the recently published ‘Five Year Forward View’ NHS England plan that calls for more use of local systems to help achieve a full paperless NHS by 2018.

“Our new SynApps on-site VNA has a zero-footprint viewer, which means clinicians (and ultimately patients) can look at images on any device, including tablets,” comments Christina Malcolmson, Deputy Director of ICT at Northampton.

“At the moment that’s just PACS images – but we will grow it and include other images and documents, so we can have a full EPR over time,” she confirms.

One of the core demands by Christina and her team for any new partner was deep exposure to the complexity of a successful Agfa PACS migration using IOCM protocols – something that SynApps and its partners have a convincing track record in: “Trusts are finding the repatriation of data challenging so it was reassuring for us that SynApps truly understood the technical challenges. SynApps is a good supplier to work with, as it understands both the technology and how to work with the NHS.”

“We are delighted to be helping Northampton General Hospital improve the availability of working with images and improve patient care through our VNA,” notes SynApps Solutions’ Managing Director, Jim Whitelaw.

“The project demonstrates what can be achieved quickly and cost effectively in PACS migration via a VNA approach whilst laying the ground work for a truly integrated patient record.”

About Northampton General Hospital

Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust provides general acute services for a population of 380,000 and hyper-acute stroke, vascular and renal services to 684,000 people living throughout whole of Northamptonshire.  The trust is also an accredited cancer centre, providing services to a wider population of 880,000 who live in Northamptonshire and parts of Buckinghamshire. For one highly specialist urological treatment they serve an even wider catchment.

About SynApps

SynApps is an independent services and solutions company specialising in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies. Founded in 2003 by former Documentum services professionals, the company provides consultancy, implementation and support services for EMC Documentum, and has authored a suite of content integration solutions, ConXApps, that allow businesses to quickly maximise their investment in ECM technologies.

Organisations across healthcare, government and commercial markets rely on SynApps solutions and services to capture and share knowledge more dynamically and efficiently.

Find out more at synapps-solutions.com, or follow the firm on Twitter @Synappssol

 

SynApps Scales up Its Health Sector Team to Meet Strong VNA Demand from NHS England

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UK tech SME building health IT market momentum with four NHS England hospitals turning to its Vendor Neutral Archive electronic patient record platform

Maidenhead, UK – July 16, 2014 –SynApps Solutions, the content management specialist, has today announced four major hospital Trusts have selected its VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) solution as the basis of a new generation of EPR (Electronic Patient Records).

These NHS England customers are the latest of a growing roster of Trusts that see VNA, an emerging standards-based way of extending proprietary DICOM-based PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) imaging systems,  as key to meeting Department of Health demands to be ‘paperless’ by 2018.

This will be achieved, say the Trust’s IT leaders, by applying a content management approach to their VNA-based medical records to incorporate DICOM and other format content and make the sharing of medical data easier as well as making patient records available across any combination of service providers across the NHS and beyond. SynApps’ customers say VNA will be the basis of their own next-generation, low-cost EPR (Electronic Patient Records) digital health systems.

“We welcome these new customers, plus are delighted to be helping them get make the Secretary of State’s vision of a paperless, truly data-sharing NHS a reality,” said SynApps’ Sales & Marketing Director, Mark Winstone.

“We have been growing the SynApps health sector team to meet the strong VNA demand that is coming through and will continue to build resource to provide excellent service to NHS England CCIOs.font-size: medium;”

“What makes a VNA-based solution so powerful is that we know it works, we know it’s in place – and we know many NHS England Trusts already use a DICOM-oriented approach to share information.

“The interest and take up of the solution by UK Trusts is testament to the VNA approach’s huge potential.”

About SynApps

SynApps is an independent services and solutions company specialising in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies. Founded in 2003 by former Documentum services professionals, the company provides consultancy, implementation and support services for EMC Documentum, and has authored a suite of content integration solutions, ConXApps, that allow businesses to quickly maximise their investment in ECM technologies.  Organisations across healthcare, government and commercial markets rely on SynApps solutions and services to capture and share knowledge more dynamically and efficiently.

Find out more at synapps-solutions.com, or follow the firm on Twitter @Synappssol

 

Highly Experienced Healthcare Consultant Appointed to Strengthen SynApps’s Rapid Growth in This Key Vertical

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To satisfy market demand, seasoned industry consultant and sales leader Tony Backhouse joins SynApps Solutions to strengthen healthcare team

 Maidenhead, UK – 7th  April, 2014 – SynApps Solutions, the content management solutions company, is delighted to announce the appointment of highly experienced public sector technology consultant Tony Backhouse.

In response to increased growth in demand for the firm’s innovative VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) based electronic patient record (EPR) systems in the NHS, SynApps has headhunted Backhouse to join its new healthcare division.

Backhouse, a seasoned professional with a strong track record in both the public and private sector, brings a combination of fifteen years of enterprise-level experience gained working with large organisations, plus leadership on a wide range of major IT-led business transformation programmes – including in the health service.

Along with a series of senior roles for global IT services group Logica, Atos Consulting and Sema Consulting, Backhouse was most recently Head of Healthcare at Enterprise Information Management firm OpenText, responsible for building a new health practice in the UK. Now he is to lend his considerable skills and contacts to SynApps’ rapid expansion into the health market.

This is based on a new approach being offered to Trusts to build a ground-level EPR, which extends proven PACS (X-Ray database) systems as the basis for a new form of patient data platform.  

Major hospital Trusts including The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen, Kingston and Liverpool Women’s Hospitals are already committed to the SynApps VNA EPR approach as their route tothe paperless, data-sharing NHS envisaged by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt for 2018.

Backhouse says he accepted the SynApps opportunity, as he is an admirer of the firm’s approach and company culture.

“It’s a smart and comprehensive solution promising huge benefits for hospitals – and I am convinced it has a great future as the basis for a new form of EPR that will really deliver for the NHS.

“SynApps has an enviable list of customers and an outstanding solution,” he adds.

“The potential of the SynApps solution, combined with a market that has exceptional growth potential, is a truly exciting challenge.”

For Jim Whitelaw, Managing Director of SynApps, “It is our aim to position SynApps as the primary provider of solutions for NHS-wide electronic patient records.”

“Tony’s considerable experience and solid track record in transformational engagements for public sector clients, combined with our own outstanding technology solution, will meet that goal – and help grow SynApps business significantly in this expanding and important market.”

About SynApps

SynApps is an independent services and solutions company specialising in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies. Founded in 2003 by former Documentum services professionals, SynApps provides consultancy, implementation and support services for EMC Documentum and Alfresco, and has authored a suite of content integration solutions, ConXApps, that allow businesses to quickly maximise their investment in ECM technologies.

Organisations across healthcare, government and commercial markets rely on SynApps solutions and services to capture and share knowledge more dynamically and efficiently.

Find out more at synapps-solutions.com, or follow us on Twitter @SynAppsSol

More Information

Carina Birt

PR for SynApps Solutions

Tel: +44 1722 322916

E-mail: carina@sarumpr.com

Content Migration In Practice: The 30 TB Example

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In our previous blogs (‘ECM Data Migration’ (I) And ‘ECM Data Migration’ (II): How Could We Help Here?’), we explored some of the benefits that customers can get via smart use of content migration services. But it’s one thing to talk about benefits in the abstract, the real proof of the data migration ‘pudding’ is in real-world customer success. So, today, let’s look at just such a case study – as I am sure you will find it insightful, even if you are in a different sector.

We are delighted to be able to report the successful completion of a big data migration project earlier this year for Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust. It was a large move! It involved the transfer of over 30 Terabytes – encompassing some 95 million individual medical images – to a new open standard, vendor-neutral archive (VNA), which is going to be the main foundation for the Trust’s EPR (electronic patient record) strategy going forward. Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest and busiest in the North of England. It will move into new state-of-the-art premises in 2017, but wants to be paper-light in the way it manages patient records first.

To put the move another way, it’s the medical image content needed to look after over 560,000 patients as held in 96 million study files. We took seven years worth of DICOM image data from the Trust’s older PACS to its new home (Carestream). We also managed the migration of the most recent two years’ data to the new Carestream PACS. SynApps worked in a successful partnership here with Pukka-J, a specialist in medical imaging and software development.

The new platform, based on our partner EMC’s Collaborative Healthcare Solution, has already started the easy archiving/retrieval of medical images from the Trust’s Radiology PACS systems in and out of the VNA.

What’s great about this system is that it’s a real example of what I talked about before – keeping what’s important and relevant even as you move to a new paradigm. In this case, we’re supporting all Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen’s historical Radiology data from 2007 onwards but also providing a home for other types of medical image content in both DICOM and non-DICOM format, all of which is currently residing in other departmental systems  – therefore maximising its future use, potential and value.

The customer has gone on record about the value content migration has given back. James Norman, CIO at the Trust, comments: “This entire project is pivotal to our strategy of advancing patient care and creating easy access to complete, unified electronic medical records. SynApps has been meticulous in its work, and has delivered against every target, which is no mean feat given the extremely high volumes of content.”

As with any data migration of this size, there was a considerable need for continuous planning, testing and monitoring to ensure the successful completion of this exercise within the required timeline. Close involvement with the Royal Liverpool Radiology PACS administrators was also critical to our success.

 This was a great project and I think it says a lot about content migration’s possibilities.

 

Extending Your X-Ray Database Is The Better Way To Get To Electronic Patient Records

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We all know that ‘the Holy Grail’ in healthcare is when we get to a point where patient services can be provided seamlessly and with continuity across any combination of service providers – from acute and mental health Trusts to community GP practices, pop-up clinics and even via the caregiver in the field.

Why Does VNA Matter – and How Do You Identify it?

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In this series of blogs we’ve been arguing that a Vendor-Neutral Archive (VNA) approach – where VNA needs to be read as describing a medical imaging system that can support the exchange of medical image content, however and wherever it has been generated – is a highly promising new way of thinking about building common NHS-wide electronic medical records, which the National Programme failed to do.