Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust has marked an important milestone in connecting busy radiologists across large parts of South East England, following the successful go live of Sectra’s enterprise imaging solution.
The trust is the sixth NHS organisation in the South East 2 Imaging Network to deploy Sectra’s enterprise imaging solution. Commonality of technology now in place opens opportunities for clinical collaboration across multiple locations, and brings with it the means to further enhance care and safety for patients.
Trusts involved now share a single instance for radiology imaging. This means that imaging, such as x-rays, CT scans, and MRIs, are now instantaneously available to professionals across the six participating NHS trusts.
Improved access to critical diagnostic information captured at each organisation has implications for safer and better-informed decision making at the point of care, and in the delivery of high quality diagnostic reporting.
It also lays the foundations for workforce development at a regional level – with new possibilities for harnessing scarce resource where it is needed most.
Trusts that have already benefitted from deployment in the imaging network include Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust, and University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust.
Several trusts in the region have also deployed the digital pathology module of Sectra’s enterprise imaging solution. Though this module was not part of the agreement at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, trust imaging specialists will still be able to benefit from visibility of pathology cases from elsewhere in the region, to complement their reporting.
Tony Newman-Sanders, Consultant Radiologist and Chief of Cancer and Diagnostics at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “We are placing modern technology into the hands of our healthcare professionals, and creating the foundations on which we can build imaging services that meet the needs of our patients into the future. This has potential to deliver rapid impact for safer care, and to maximise the use of our specialist diagnostic expertise.”
The deployment, which comes after a previously signed contract with Sectra, follows thorough work to consolidate imaging at the trust, evaluate the safe use of Sectra’s solution, and to ensure that it is configured around trust workflows, and the needs of healthcare professionals and patients.
Jane Rendall, UK and Ireland managing director for Sectra, said: “Hard work has gone into making sure that this deployment is successful. The potential for enhanced patient care that comes with it is highly significant at a time when diagnostics is so high on the national agenda. It has been gratifying to collaborate with teams at the trust, and across the region, in delivering against their objectives, and I look forward to ongoing collaboration as the future of diagnostics continues to evolve.”
