Leeds Teaching Hospital goes live with imaging solution from Agfa

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has gone live with an imaging solution that allows clinicians to access images and reports from anywhere within the hospital.

Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imagine (EI) solution provides a unified platform with clinical tools, reporting and a workflow engine to support better collaboration with nearby trusts.

It offers a single storage solution for all radiological images which clinicians and staff can have access to in real-time anywhere in the hospital.

It replaces Agfa’s IMPAX solution, which had been in place at the trust since 2003. Switching solutions required more than 9.5 million studies to be migrated and training more than 200 members of staff.

Paul Jones, chief digital information officer at the trust, said: “Leeds is one of the largest trusts in the UK, providing care to over 1.5 million patients every year, many of whom have complex and urgent needs.

“Upgrading a major system like EI had to be very carefully planned to minimise any downtime since we’re dealing with several thousand examinations per day.

“EI has provided a much more stable infrastructure. We immediately noticed the productivity and efficiency savings made by having fully-integrated image viewing and reporting on a single platform with a modern interface.”

The go live also supports the aims of the Yorkshire Imaging Collaborative to create a radiology image sharing network between eight sites across Yorkshire and the Humber.

The eight trusts in the Collaborative, which cover a patient population of more than 3 million, will also benefit from Agfa HealthCare’s XERO Exchange Network (XEN), a tool built to allow images and reports to be shared across the region at any time.

Fahmid Chowdhury, clinical director of radiology at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, said: “Agfa’s EI solution will play an important part in our strategy to make radiology image sharing across the region a reality. A large part of the success of EI implementation has been clinical engagement and our partnership with Agfa, who helped train our colleagues and worked with us to tailor the system to meet the specific needs of the trust.

“Staff are already starting to realise the benefits of having a more stable unified platform for image viewing and reporting, with the potential for fast access to images and reports from regional hospital trusts and greater flexibility in how radiology reporting is delivered.

“It is hoped that this will eventually increase reporting capacity and reduce turn-around times while also minimising the number of examinations a patient needs, as well as the number of visits to the hospital.”

Roberto Anello, managing director UK and Ireland for Agfa HealthCare, added: “Implementing the technology during the Covid-19 pandemic has had its challenges, but thankfully, through the commitment and effort of everyone involved, the project has been an overwhelming success.

“Leeds Hospitals is a prestigious teaching trust with an extensive range of radiology requirements, so we’re very proud to have helped them achieve their digital ambitions for image sharing.”