Heart of England invests in digital retinopathy

Information management and storage specialists, EMC Corporation, have implemented two EMC Centera content storage systems at the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust to b e able to more effectively store and provide rapid access digital diabetic retinopathy images.

One hundred Birmingham and Black Country community-based optometrists will be participating in a regional diabetic retinopathy screening programme, linked to the Heart of England trust by a virtual private network.

The trust has invested in the new storage system as part of its development of digital diabetic retinopathy working towards the Department of Health target for all diabetic retinopathy screening to be digital by December 2007, to help better manage diabetes. The Birmingham project is one of the largest UK digital diabetic retinopathy projects yet.

EMC Centera is an active archive solution for online fixed content that is simple, scalable, and secure. It provides cost-effective retention and protection, of a wide range of content. At Heart of England, the system will provide easy access and secure long-term archiving for over 100,000 digital retinopathy images.

A Heart of England spokesperson told E-Health Insider: “We have accredited a number of high street opticians to have their optometrists check any patients whom GPs feel may need checking on for diabetes. Patients will be referred to these centres, where the optometrists are provided with a camera, capture PC and connectivity line to send the images across to the main screening centre.”

An EMC spokesperson said: “By consolidating patient data generated by over 100 optometry practices in the area onto EMC Centera, Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust will be able to make quicker diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy.”

The Heart of England spokesperson added: “We wanted to create a specific type of service that would meet the requirements of the community. Birmingham and Black Country are very urbanised areas, which are fairly fragmented, so it made sense for us to have a high presence in the area and find a way of getting the best coverage for the population.”

The optometrists, working with the new system network, will digitally photograph four images of each patient’s eyes, and using software supplied by Digital Healthcare will then feed these images to the EMC Centera at Heart of England’s retinopathy screening centre.

Digital Healthcare’s UK sales manager, Jim Lythgow, said, “This is the largest project of its type conducted in the UK and Digital Healthcare software, used in conjunction with EMC systems, has proven to be a successful system for handling very large quantities of patient retina images.”

When the images are received they will be analysed by the trust and a diagnosis carried out. After diagnosis the images will be retained electronically for up to eight years in line with UK legislation for long-term data retention, as well as for instant retrieval of images for any follow-up consultations.

The Heart of England spokesperson added: “These highly detailed and specific images will carry the integrity of being maintained over the eight year period meaning that should original images become damaged, we can easily get a replicate and maintain the quality of the image originally taken.”

The trust will replicate data between the EMC Centera systems every day for complete backup and recovery. This recovery management process ensures critical patient information is protected and available when required by medical staff.

Heart of England’s senior IT specialist, Mohammed Waeed, said: “There are an estimated 1.8 million people in the UK with diabetes. The deployment of EMC Centera will significantly enhance our ability to quickly and accurately diagnose diabetic retinopathy in patients within Birmingham and the Black Country because doctors will have better and faster access to the crucial information they need to make decisions.”

An EMC spokesperson added: "The trust also expects EMC Centera to deliver a total cost of ownership 40% lower, over the next five years, than any other solution available for the high-availability archiving of crucial digital retina images."