Newcastle signs with Carestream

Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has signed a ten-year deal with Carestream for a new, integrated picture archiving and communication system and radiology information system.

The trust will work with the company to replace its current PACS/RIS, which is provided by Infinitt Healthcare Solutions, with a Carestream Vue PACS and a Carestream Vue RIS. Go-live is planned for early 2016, following data migration from the legacy system.  

Other systems to be deployed include Carestream Vue Motion, a vendor-neutral image viewer that uses a web browser; voice recognition tool Carestream Vue Reporting; and Carestream Vue Beyond, which serves as a business intelligence and reporting dashboard to access PACS data.

In a statement to Digital Health News, the trust said it believes the new system “will offer enhanced business intelligence.

“[This] will assist in the future planning of services to exceed patient expectations whilst making focussed investment decisions in a financially challenging environment.” 

Carestream will provide the system as a managed service, including software and services and hardware.

The trust, which performs around 550,000 radiology examinations each year, said a managed service was the preferred option has this had been the arrangement since the original PACS deployment in 2004.

“The trust felt that this was the most efficient and effective management of a core clinical system.”

It added that managed service is supported by personnel at the trust but that for such a “specialised product” it recognises the need for vendor support. 

Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals tendered for the PACS/RIS using a framework drawn up by NHS Supply Chain to support a major refresh of the digital imaging market triggered by the end of the contracts put in place by the National PACS Programme a decade ago.