Trusts aim for ‘seamless’ image-sharing

A consortium of six trusts in Portsmouth, Southampton and Hampshire have awarded a contract to HSS, Sectra and Philips to supply them with imaging informatics systems.

The group aim to have “seamless transfer” of images across the area by July next year.

A consortium called Salisbury, Wight and South Hampshire Domain NHS Trust was formed in June 2011 and a tender document was published that August.

The consortium has announced that its preferred suppliers are; HSS for a radiology information system; Sectra for a picture archiving and communications system; and Philips for a vendor neutral archive, hosting and data sharing.

A statement from the consortium said SWASH are implementing IT systems that interact with each other so data relating to imaging investigations can be “seamlessly transferred” from one NHS organisation to another across the Portsmouth, Southampton, Hampshire and surrounding areas.

The tender notice said each trust can call-off against the framework contract and the agreement will provide a “degree of adaptation and localisation of the solution to reflect specific local needs.”

Any image captured at one of the participating trusts should be immediately viewable at any other location and the system would also be required to share images with healthcare providers elsewhere in the UK, the document explained.

NHS trusts involved in the consortium include a primary care trust – Isle of Wight NHS Trust – and a community care trust – Solent NHS Trust. Others are; Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Mark Griffiths, clinical lead for the SWASH consortium, said providers in the area felt it was important to get everyone involved across the continuum of care.

The agreement will allow acute trusts to cope with future capacity by providing the systems needed to deliver more care in the community.

“This is part of the development of an infrastructure that we hope to do much more with in the future,” he explained.

“Just to replace what we had, we think was the wrong thing to do.

“Our patients are going to be moving around so much more. We wanted to best utilise the resources we have in the whole region.”

He said the aim is to have all of the services up and running by July 2013, then the group will look to join up with other local services in “deploying a sharing environment.”

"As we are a clinically led consortium, we understand the issues that the NHS has with regards to transferring patient information between hospitals,” Griffiths said.

“It is our aim to ensure the systems we implement put the patient at the centre of everything we do and maximise utilization of the regions resources to improve our patients’ care.”