Northampton Migrates Away From NPfIT Systems

Northampton General Hospital has selected a supplier to help with the repatriation of its Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS).

This imaging library is part of systems implemented in the hospital as part of the failed National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

The healthcare facility has opted for content management firm SynApps Solutions to supply it with a Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA).

SynApps claims it will be migrating the Trust from the existing National Programme Accenture Agfa PACS platform by earl 2015 to its own platform so the hospital can take its images back under its own control.

The firms also says that Northampton will now be able to have a long-term archive for the Trust and simplify and de-risk the subsequent move to a new PACS provider.

“Our new SynApps on-site VNA has a zero-footprint viewer, which means clinicians and ultimately patients can look at images on any device, including tablets,” claimed Christina Malcolmson, deputy director of ICT at the hospital.

“At the moment, that’s just PACS images – but we will grow it and include other images and documents, so we can have a full EPR (electronic patient record) over time,” she added.

VNA Has Big Potential

SynApps claims the VNA will allow clinicians to easily and safely view and share patient images and MRI and CT scans, as well as other content including medical photography and reports with other medical organisations not just locally, but potentially across the country.

Northampton views the new system not only as an in-house patient image library, but as the first step towards a local EPR and achieving Jeremy Hunt’s challenge to all NHS Trusts to be completely paperless by 2018.

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