Download BT Radworks: Taking Help to Where Help is Needed by Alan Fisher

NLG NHS Trust | Clinical Radiology | Publications | Taking help to where help is needed
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TAKING HELP TO WHERE HELP IS NEEDED
28th November 2000
by Sally Shaw on behalf of BT Health
It is a common belief that help is never around when you need it most. This is a particular problem
when receiving the correct help could make the difference between life and death. However, thanks
to BT Health and the staff of N.E. Lincs NHS Trust, the people of Grimsby and Scunthorpe can be
assured that where help is defined as a skilled radiologist or neurologist, then it will always be at
hand when most needed.
The reason is simple: the Trust worked with BT Health to implement the teleradiology solution, BT
Radworks, which electronically links together the Diana Princess of Wales Hospital in Grimsby and
the General Hospital in Scunthorpe. The hospitals can now share each other’s consultant
radiologists, and in addition, access specialist advice from the neuro-sciences department at Hull
Royal Infirmary.
The result has been to slice the average time taken for an on-call consultant to view an x-ray image
from 18 minutes to a mere five or six minutes – a reduction of some 66 per cent.
Alan Fisher, Head of Medical Engineering at the Diana Princess of Wales Hospital, said: "Getting x-ray
images to the appropriate consultant in a fast and quality manner is key to ensuring that our patients
have the best chance of recovery. We were aware of the need to get images not only to our own
on-call consultants but also to the neuro-sciences department at Hull Royal Infirmary for more
complicated cases. The BT Radworks solution allows us to do exactly this by sending images
electronically without any loss of quality. For our patients it means that irrespective of time or
location they will have access to appropriate healthcare at all times."
Sending electronic images to the specialists at Hull also makes possible speedier diagnosis for
patients and significant savings on ambulance transportation and courier costs.
"In the past a clinical decision had to be made whether to transfer the patient to Hull for treatment
or not," said Mr Fisher. "This would possibly mean that both the patient and the CT images would be
transported by ambulance to Hull for assessment, or alternatively the images alone would be sent by
courier. BT Radworks helps us to reduce these costs which are estimated to be £10,000 per annum.
The use of BT Radworks also allows us to be more certain of the potential consequences of moving a
patient since expert advice can be sought quickly and effectively from Hull as necessary."
The imaging technology is based around Applicares Medical Imagings’ internationally recognised
software for the capture, transmission and reporting of radiographic images. The flexible nature of it
means that it can handle images from almost all common radiographic modalities, including standard
radiology film images. It can also handle a vast array of other images such as endoscopy and
multiple frame ultrasound images.
N.E Lincs sees imaging technology as a crucial building block in delivering a variety of telemedicine
applications, for example online opthamology and dermatology consultancy.
"We expect to continue to grow our use of telemedicine into other areas. It makes financial sense to
maximise the returns from our investment in BT Radworks. The flexibility of the product and its
ability to handle non radiographic images in a similar fashion lends itself well to the other sciences
which require images to be viewed at distant locations," says Mr Fisher.
BT Health is keen to promote the experiences of N.E. Lincs NHS Trust to demonstrate the benefits
that strategically implemented IT can bring.
David Rainey, head of BT Health says: "The whole reason for IT is to shift information from A to B
and nowhere can this be put to better use than within the NHS where it can have crucial implications
for the care of patients. I would argue that the kind of good practice we are now seeing in N.E Lincs
should be duplicated throughout the country.
"The solution itself is a communications network with some very special software running on the local
machines. Its versatility means that it can run over a Local Area Network (LAN), a Wide Area
Network (WAN) including NHS Healthnet, or simple digital telephone line such as ISDN 2. This makes
it suitable for a multitude of different locations and existing customer infrastructures."