University Hospitals Birmingham live with new Carestream VNA

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with a new vendor neutral archive (VNA) from Carestream Health.

The trust, which operates Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Solihull Hospital and Community Services, Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham Chest Clinic, deployed the Carestream Vue Archive in July.

The contract will run for an initial five-year term, with Carestream replacing an existing system from GE Healthcare.

University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) has extended its contract with GE Healthcare until February 2020 while the migration to the new system is underway.

This carries the option to be extended for a further three months until 31 May if required to complete the migration.

The value of the contract with Carestream Health was not disclosed.

University Hospitals Birmingham completed a merger by acquisition of Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust (HEFT) on 1 April 2018.

UHB is one of the largest teaching hospital trusts in England with an annual turnover of nearly £1.5 billion.

The Global Digital Exemplar trust treats some 2.2 million people every year across all its sites and employs 20,000 staff.

In November, UHB reported that an electronic prescription tool developed by staff had reduced the number of errors when prescribing a drug for paracetamol overdoses to zero.

It has also been running demonstrations of 5G technology to showcase where the new wireless standard could bring advancements to healthcare.