Chesterfield Royal Hospital goes live with region-wide PACS system

Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has become the sixth NHS trust in the East Midlands to go live with a system which will allow it to share patient images, scans and x-rays with other hospitals in the region.

The hospital joins five other members of the East Midlands Imaging Network (EMRAD) already using the system including Nottingham University Hospitals, Sherwood Forest Hospitals, Kettering General Hospital, Northampton General Hospital and United Lincolnshire Hospitals.

Known as the PACS Portal, the cloud-based image sharing system can help ensure that critical decisions about a patient’s care are made quickly and safely.

Dr James Thomas, Medical Director of EMRAD said: “We’re delighted to welcome Chesterfield Royal Hospital onto our region-wide image sharing system. It’s fantastic news for patients, especially in the north Midlands, as their medical images and scans will now be instantly available to clinicians across the region.

“From this week [9 November], if a patient from the Chesterfield area needs to be brought to the QMC, their scans and images can arrive in Nottingham before they do, allowing clinicians to get a head start on assessing their condition and planning their care. We know that the image sharing portal is already speeding up and improving clinical decision-making, which will improve patient care.”

The trusts are using the GE Healthcare Cross Enterprise Reporting tool, which is designed to help information be shared more easily between hospitals.

David Labajo, VP commercial Europe GE Healthcare Digital, added: “In a time when healthcare is stretched to capacity, solutions need to enable a hospital to be more efficient and to be beneficial to both the caregivers and the patients.

“The addition of Chesterfield Royal Hospital to the regional PACS Solution is a great milestone for EMRAD, and helps strengthen their capacity as a radiology imaging provider”.