United Bristol Healthcare Trust has begun the next stage in
its ambitious project to provide a central repository for patient
records.
The trust is hooking up its ultrasound scanners to its EMC-based
storage area network and network-attached storage to give
healthcare professionals real-time remote access to the scans via
PCs running Internet Explorer.
This is the latest development in the Bristol trust's content
management strategy pioneered by Narasimha-Moorthy Shastry, a
professor in the directorate of radiology at Bristol Royal
Infirmary. He said, "Since 1996 Bristol has been looking to
integrate all data sources for patients and make them available
online to the clinical team managing patient care."
Shastry said the Bristol trust's system had led to considerable
savings on commercially available products for archiving and
deploying x-rays and other forms of patient images electronically.
Using a standards-based approach, Shastry has been able to develop
a cheaper system than those adopted in other trusts in the South
West. "We have insisted companies demonstrate their imaging systems
on our network to see if they integrate well with the existing
systems," he said.
The acquisition and integration of the San and Nas cost the trust
less than £300,000, with annual running costs of £25,000.