NHS Tele-Radiology Services Provider To Deploy PACS

The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has become the first of eight NHS trusts in the UK to deploy a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) from international medical imaging IT and cybersecurity company Sectra.

According to Digital Health, the new PACS will transform how clinical staff examine crucial patient images. Faster diagnoses for millions of people, new possibilities around AI, and region-wide collaboration are just some of the benefits that will follow.

Elaine Quick, Greater Manchester’s PACS implementation lead, said she was impressed with how teams in the trust have worked with Sectra to implement the technology during the challenges presented by the current pandemic.

“This first go-live is the start of the main journey. We will be able to maximise how our staff work across different trusts and we will be able to connect 15 years’ worth of rich data currently isolated in individual trusts,” she said.

PACS is used by medical professionals to review patient images digitally. It has already been proven to have many immediate benefits, such as staff being able to view and report on images remotely while working from home during the lockdown.

Once the initiative expands the new PACS and an accompanying multimedia system known as a vendor neutral archive (VNA), both supplied by Sectra, across Greater Manchester, clinical staff will be able to instantly access patient images captured at any of the participating NHS trusts in the region.

The Pennine Acute consists of hospitals in Oldham, Bury, Rochdale and North Manchester. The Oldham, Bury and Rochdale sites are managed along with Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust as the Northern Care Alliance. The North Manchester site is managed as part of the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust Group.

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