Big Local PACS Win for Carestream Health

HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, May 12—West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust (West Herts) and Carestream Health have signed and exchanged contracts to replace the Trust’s existing PACS with a CARESTREAM Vue PACS and Vue VNA. The new five-year contract will be provided as a Managed Service, including software, services, workstation and server hardware.

Pictured L- R: Dr Jill Hunt, Joint Clinical Director of Radiology; Nuala Littlechild, Lead Superintendent Radiographer; Charlie McCaffrey, Managing Director, Carestream; Louise Barker-Devereux, Chief Superintendent Radiographer; Sue Daniels, Radiology Services Manager.

West Herts comprises three hospitals—Watford General Hospital, St Alban’s City Hospital and Hemel Hempstead General Hospital. The latter is located across the road from Carestream’s UK Head Office. The Trust provides acute healthcare services to a core catchment population of approximately half a million people living in West Hertfordshire and the surrounding area. It also provides more specialist services to a wider population, serving residents of North London, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and East Hertfordshire. In total, West Herts performs just over 300,000 radiology exams a year.

Lisa Emery, Chief Information Officer for West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust said: “This contract will support us to be able to enable clinical images to be shared, quickly, securely and cost effectively. We felt that this was the most efficient and effective management clinical system, which will help to improve patient experience and patient care.”

Carestream’s Vue PACS will provide enterprise-wide review, data management, distribution and archiving. From a single workspace, physicians and radiologists can access the clinical tools and applications they need for convenient local and remote reporting. A web-enabled diagnostic viewer provides integrated advanced visualisation, 3D post processing, lesion management, dictation, critical results notification and a mammography module, eliminating the need for dedicated workstations. The Vue VNA works with the Vue PACS to consolidate separate imaging systems into one repository, using the latest interoperability standards.

‘This reinforces our market leading position in the UK for Healthcare IT projects of this kind,’ said Charlie McCaffrey, Managing Director, Carestream Health UK. ‘It is a terrific win on our doorstep!’