Tags: PACS

SynApps Solutions is Taking Part in the PACS RIS Event, 29 April 2014

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Maidenhead, February 13, 2014 – SynApps Solutions will be exhibiting at the PACS RIS Exhibition 2014 entitled ‘Enabling the Power of Data’ on Tuesday, 29 April. The event is aimed at NHS Trusts which have already placed short-term, tactical extensions to their PACS (picture archiving and communications systems) and RIS (Radiology Information Systems) contracts, and is intended to help them find out more about system innovations, as well as introduce them to new suppliers.

The event will be held at Doncaster Racetrack and is organised on behalf of NHS Supply Chain (the joint venture between the Supply Chain Management Division of the NHS Business Services Authority and DHL). To register, please visit: http://www.supplychain.nhs.uk/globals/Online%20forms/Pacs%20and%20Ris% 20conference%202014    

Venue:

Doncaster Racetrack

Leger Way

Doncaster

South Yorkshire

DN2 6BB

SynApps Announces 2 new PACS Repatriation Event Dates

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Maidenhead, Feb 6th, 2014 – The SynApps healthcare team is taking to the road and delivering two new PACS and VNA events in March.

Following last year’s very successful events at the Kings Fund in London –

‘PACS Repatriation – Underway? Completed? Not off the block yet? and ‘The journey from VNA Repatriation via EDM to Content Sharing (XDS) – the team will repackage that format in two new venues to held in Peterborough and Liverpool.

Registration for the Liverpool event (March 17th) which focuses on the Journey from VNA Repatriation via EDM to Content Sharing (XDS) and for the Peterborough event (March 24th) are now open.  Email Gary.Britnell@10.128.0.8 to book your place.

More details here

 

 

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.

 

SynApps Platform wins TechWorld ‘Data Centre of the Year 2013’ Award

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Maidenhead, UK – December 9th, 2013 – A platform which SynApps Solutions,the content management solutions company, created for the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals, has won the TechWorld ‘Data Centre of the Year 2013’ Award.

The award, which was in the ‘Projects’ category, was made for the PACS, RIS and VNA platform which gives Trust clinicians – and external healthcare partners – instantaneous access to patients’ medical images and associated case notes at the point of need. The awards ceremony took place on 21st November.

The Trust is one of the largest and busiest in the North of England, with an
annual budget of over £400 million. Although the original trigger for
implementing a VNA was the need to replace a proprietary picture archiving and communication system (PACS), following the breakup of the NHS Connecting for Health IT Programme, the Royal’s plans for the technology go much wider. The Trust selected SynApps for the VNA implementation based on the company’s experience and its status as an EMC-preferred VNA implementation partner.

The Royal Liverpool Project beat three other shortlisted candidates – Cloud
Talent (Project Amadeus), Basho Technologies (Temetra scales to manage billions of data points with Riak) and Skanska UK (Bricks & Mortar – building a new core infrastructure).

The TechWorld Awards have firmly established themselves as the major
infrastructure and networking awards event in the IT calendar. Recognising both products and users, the TechWorld Awards highlight innovation on all sides of the IT industry. TechWorld is part of IDG Communications, the world’s largest IT publishing company.

SynApps Solutions

SynApps Solutions is an independent services and solutions company specialising in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies. In the healthcare sector, SynApps in conjunction with EMC, is a pioneer in advanced vendor-neutral archives. These have the potential to transform the way NHS Trusts share medical image files with other healthcare providers and to accelerate their progress towards single digital patient records.

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

SynApps Solutions to be at PACS 2013 (‘Radiology Information Systems and PACS Conference’), 11 December 2013

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663_20130711-144325 Radiology Conf 11 Dec 2013SynApps Solutions will have a stand at PACS 2013 on 11 December 2013 at the ICO Conference Centre in London, where speakers will include Dr Tony Newman-Sanders, National PACS Lead, Health and Social Care Information Centre and Alasdair Thompson, Head of National PACS Programme, Health and Social Care Information Centre. The theme for the event will be: Delivering the Paperless and Filmless NHS

This one day conference will not only examine how to work with PACS and RIS beyond the National Programme, but also discuss getting the most out of Radiology Information Systems and PACS through effective workflow and systems design and how to integrate them with other Trust systems and Electronic Patient Records in the development of a paperless and filmless NHS. There will be a focus on interoperability standards, data localisation and migration.

The conference is aimed at senior NHS decision makers including heads of imaging departments, consultant radiologists, radiographers and IT lead managers and clinicians.

The opening presentation will provide a national update looking towards a paperless and filmless NHS and also discuss further opportunities for redesigning radiology services such as seven day working and home reporting. The conference will continue with presentations focusing on ensuring continuity, improving the effectiveness of PACS reporting and order communications, getting the most out of PACS and improving workflow and processes to ensure systems work intelligently.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to hear from a variety of healthcare professionals on topics including how to improve the effectiveness of PACS reporting and order communications; re-evaluating security controls and information governance with wider sharing of information across the health economy and private sector; as well as a case study from Hammersmith Hospital who will discuss their experiences of being the first UK filmless hospital.

More Information

ICO Conference Centre, 22 Berners Street, London W1T 3DD

Nearest Tube: Goodge Street or Tottenham Court Road

For more information on the conference, please visit: http://www.healthcareconferencesuk.co.uk/radiology-information-systems-pacs

 Follow @SynAppsSol and follow the conference on #PACS2013

Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Engages SynApps to Migrate Medical Images to Vendor-Neutral Archive

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The staged repatriation of 19Tb of patient radiology images from a BT data centre will see the content held in an interim in-house PACS from Sectra, then replicated to a SynApps/EMC VNA as part of the Trust’s broader EPR plans

Maidenhead, UK – November 27th, 2013 – SynApps Solutions, the content management solutions company, has won a major medical image migration contract with Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. SynApps will repatriate 19Tb of radiology content to the Trust’s premises, where it will be held in an interim Picture Archiving and Communications System before being replicated to a SynApps/EMC vendor-neutral content archive.

Currently, Kingston Hospital’s medical image archive library is hosted in a BT data centre. Following the end of the NHS’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT) arrangements, this hosting contract will end in July 2015. SynApps, which will drive the project, is working in partnership with PACS specialist Sectra to repatriate the off-site medical image library. Work will be underway by January 2014. Transferring 19Tb of content over the secure N3 NHS network will take a long time; the plan is a migration rate of 2Tb a month.

“2015 is not only our deadline for leaving BT, but also for replacing the PACS contract, so we needed a decent safety margin to ensure we had all our images back in time,” explains Norman Harling, Deputy Director of Information Management & Technology at the Trust. “We’ve been sending images to BT since 2006, with volumes of around 250,000 radiology investigations a year, so this is not a small job.

“Once we have extracted the content from the existing PACS and moved contract, we will release a lot of cost – upwards of £250,000 a year,” he adds. It is hoped that the repatriation will be complete six months ahead of schedule, allowing early access to these savings.

The interim PACS platform provided by Sectra will act as a working store for the medical image content until the Trust’s longer-term PACS strategy has been finalised. In the meantime the Trust will replicate the medical image content to a SynApps vendor-neutral archive (VNA) platform. This will allow the content to be managed more intelligently and incorporated within the Trust’s wider plans for electronic patient records (EPR). (The SynApps/EMC VNA platform caters for a broad range of content types and introduces sophisticated indexing and search and retrieval facilities.)

“We see the SynApps VNA as a building block in our strategy for EPR,” Mr Harling explains. “What we don’t want to do is just keep growing our medical image store indefinitely.” A more joined-up content strategy will bring additional benefits, he notes.

“At the moment, specialities such as ophthalmology, cardiology and endoscopy each have their own discrete databases. In parallel to the PACS archive project we are exploring how we can bring these content stores into the VNA to open up access.”

Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust already works closely with other healthcare providers including St George’s Hospital in Tooting and The Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, sharing radiology content. “Our plan is to harness EMC/SynApps’ cross-document sharing capabilities to create fuller patient records that can be readily accessed by different specialities,  and other acute and community services,” Mr Harling says.

Of the choice of SynApps, he comments, “SynApps has a strong reputation for migrating data and combining it using a vendor-neutral platform. They were also willing to do an initial trail of the migration, which gave us confidence in the outcome. I’ve been very impressed with their technical knowledge, their understanding of our needs and their willingness to work flexibly. This includes managing the relationship with Sectra.”

SynApps recently announced a strategic partnership with Sectra, which will see the two companies collaborate on specialist content migration projects for NHS Trusts.

About SynApps Solutions

SynApps is an independent services and solutions company specialising in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies. In the healthcare sector, SynApps in conjunction with EMC, is a pioneer in advanced vendor-neutral archives. These have the potential to transform the way NHS Trusts share medical image files with other healthcare providers and to accelerate their progress towards single digital patient records. Find out more at synapps-solutions.com or follow us on Twitter @SynAppsSol