BridgeHead strikes wicket VNA deal with England and Wales Cricket Board

BridgeHead Software will provide its vendor neutral archive technology to the England and Wales Cricket Board under a new deal.

Through the agreement, players’ medical images will be stored on BridgeHead’s HealthStore vendor neutral archive (VNA), offering a single repository for medical data belonging to members of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

As a result, clinicians will be able to securely access players’ medical data anywhere in the world, helping them inform treatment decisions in the event of an injury.

BridgeHead’s HealthStore, which the vendor dubs a “independent clinical archive” or ICA, will initially be used to store radiology images, although this will extend to all ECB players’ medical images later down the line.

The repository enables medical data to be shared with different groups of authorised specialist clinicians and team doctors. As a result, if a player is injured overseas, onsite clinicians can take an MRI scan, upload it to the system and then review it with the UK doctors to determine the best treatment plan.

Damian Smith, head of information technology at ECB, said: “We have responsibility for our players’ medical data from every form of cricket for men and women. The far-reaching consequences of this information falling into the wrong hands means that we are very focused on compliance to athlete data privacy and security.

“Protecting valuable player information is much easier once you have all of your data in one location.”

HealthStore will also allow ECB to analyse historic medical data to monitor patterns in injuries and help develop techniques to decrease the risk of future injuries.

Jim Beagle, CEO of BridgeHead Software, said: “On the face of it, our NHS and healthcare customers seem very different from an elite sports body, such as the ECB. But, dig below the surface and the need to provide secure access to the latest medical images, wherever the patient or clinician might be, are exactly the same.”