Clinicians working at Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust (QE Gateshead) can now continue to view medical radiology images such as CT, MR, ultrasound, and computed radiography, from any department, following the successful migration of over one million medical studies (approximately 15TB of data), to a new Picture Archive and Communication Solution (PACS) and Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA). The new solution enables QE Gateshead to better store, protect and share radiology information across the Trust. 
The Trust deployed Carestream’s Vue PACS following a successful data migration project and VNA deployment with healthcare data management specialist, BridgeHead Software. The move to the new PACS was essential due to the imminent ending of its existing PACS contract, signed under the NHS Connecting for Health Programme (CfH).
The two-phased project firstly saw in excess of one million medical imaging studies transferred from the incumbent PACS provider into BridgeHead’s HealthStore™ application-independent clinical archive (incorporating a VNA) and then made available to Carestream’s Vue PACS. Specifically, phase one of the project addressed data quality and data compliance. The project required all imaging data to conform to the DICOM standard, i.e. the standard for handling, storing, printing and transmitting information in medical imaging. This culminated in all current studies held in the central data store (as provided by the National CfH Programme), as well as those kept in the legacy PACS, being successfully migrated to the BridgeHead VNA.
Phase two of the project integrated the BridgeHead VNA with Carestream’s Vue PACS for the archiving of new data and the retrieval of historical data from the legacy PACS. Carestream and BridgeHead Software worked collaboratively to configure the solution to enable VuePACS to query the VNA, retrieving live data directly from it and storing it locally in its own cache. This design will enable users to quickly compare relevant priors for diagnostic reading.
Phase two also ensured data adhered to the Imaging Object Change Management (IOCM) standard, which enables Vue PACS to send an instruction to the VNA to remove, hide or delete a study in the event of patient safety or data quality issues. An initial nine months’ worth of the most recent studies were uploaded into VuePACS. By doing so, when the switch in PACS providers took place, there was minimal disruption to image access for users and, therefore, QE Gateshead’s ability to provide continuity of care was not impacted.
Jim Beagle, CEO of BridgeHead Software said: “When managing patient information in an application-independent clinical archive – data retention, data quality and conformance to standards facilitates informed decision-making about patients. BridgeHead worked collaboratively with Carestream to ensure compliance to the DICOM standard and to correct any pre-existing data quality issues thereby meeting the strict data retention requirements and data quality standards outlined in our SLA with Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust.”