South Tees renews PACS/RIS with Agfa

South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has signed a seven-year deal with Agfa HealthCare that will establish it as a European reference site for the company.

The contract will update the trust’s picture archiving and communication system, radiology information system, Computed Radiography and Cardiovascular Information System.

The trust will replace these systems with fully-integrated IMPAX solutions, install IMPAX Business Intelligence, and use Agfa products to improve its reporting, viewing and distribution of images.

The contract will also extend the relationship between the two organisations, and give the trust the opportunity to inform the development of future AGFA products.

South Tees’ original PACS/RIS contract was signed outside the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

Michelle Harrison, radiology systems manager for the trust, said: “The PACS and RIS contracts were due for renewal, which is why we went out to tender.

“A rigorous procurement lasted for two years. [The outcome] will allow us a fully integrated approach that will meet both local and national requirements now and in the future.”

The trust believes the partnership will provide greater access to Agfa systems for clinicians and improved functionality.

“This will improve efficiency in the trust,” Harrison said. “Importantly [it] will also support the cardiology and radiology functions whilst providing real-time radiology business intelligence to optimise the use of clinical, business and administrative data.”

South Tees is also investing in more imaging storage and in a virtualisation project to improve disaster recovery.

The installation of two new servers at James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough and Friarage Hospital in Northallerton will give clinicians a back-up of important patient information, using a VMWare cloud tool.

“At the moment, if a server goes down and users can’t access it, that impacts on our service,” Harrison said. “However, high availability with VMWare will give us a failover to provide a continuation of service [so any failure] should go unnoticed by our clinical users.”

The upgrade will also include a fleet of Barco Coronis Fusion diagnostic colour displays and MediCal QAWeb online quality assurance system.

Grant Witheridge, general manager of Agfa HealthCare UK, said: "We are delighted that South Tees have chosen to remain with Agfa HealthCare and also incorporate our latest business intelligence and cardiology solutions.

“Having worked in partnership with the trust for the last seven years, we regard South Tees as one of our flagship customers in the UK and look forward to extending this relationship into the future, helping the trust achieve its goals using our integrated IMPAX product portfolio."

The radiology department has already started implementing the changes and expects to be fully updated by the end of April, whilst the cardiology department hopes to be completed by the autumn.