Doncaster deploys Fujifilm PACS

Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has deployed a picture archiving and communication system from Fujifilm.

Under the National Programme for IT implementation, the trust used an Agfa PACs managed by Accenture, the local service provider.

Although most of the 32 trusts in the clusters covered by Accenture chose to extend their contracts for a further year, Doncaster and Bassetlaw was one of six that decided to go out to tender, opting to procure through the Official Journal of the European Union.

Neelam Dugar, consultant radiologist at the trust, explained that because technology costs were falling, an early procurement made sense.

As well as procuring a new PACS from Fujifilm, the trust procured a radiology information system from Rogan-Delft to replace the previous McKesson RIS, and a vendor neutral archive from Acuo.

Implementation of the VNA is almost complete, but implementation of the RIS has been delayed because of the challenge of implementing the systems simultaneously.

The plan is to have it in place before Christmas. In the meantime, the old McKesson RIS has been integrated with the Fujifilm PACS.

Dr Dugar said the VNA was an essential part of the procurement.

“Without the VNA you don’t have lifecycle management, but with a VNA, you can decide how long you keep your images and data, and that is something I think everybody should be looking at.”

Its XDS capability, which allows documents to be stored in PDF format, means that it will be used as an enterprise-wide system, she added.

“It moves from being a single department radiology system to a multi-speciality system, so it’s about future-proofing.”

The new PACS includes muliplanar imaging functionality, which is “very slick” and has been welcomed by clinicians, Dr Dugar said.

It integrates with other clinical systems, including the Medisec electronic patient record system that contains the clinical letters for the trust.

“Any system can be configured to launch the Fuji PACS in a patient context, which has been really good – our clinicians have loved that,” said Dugar. “It was one of the things we included in our specification, and Fuji has been really positive about integration with other systems.”

The log-in process is centrally managed through Microsoft Active Directory, which means that users only need a single username and password.

“It’s important that we eliminate unnecessary clicks and extra passwords,” said Dr Dugar.

This week also sees the launch of a pilot project to allow clinicians to access the PACS from their own iPads or other mobile tablet devices within the trust’s network.

“When we went through procurement, clinicians found this quite useful. It will allow them to see the images on the tablets as they do their ward rounds,” said Dr Dugar.