London Programme for IT

PACS Exchange enables images to be shared quickly and easily

Croydon University Hospital refers around 10 cancer patients a week to the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and through PACS Exchange shares images quickly and easily for multi-disciplinary meetings (MDT).

Time saved with PACS Exchange

If Croydon University Hospital refers a patient to the Royal Marsden for a lower GI MDT, for example, all the relevant CT and MRI images are called up on PACS. Croydon's MDT co-ordinators simply search for a patient, highlight the images needed and select PACS Exchange on the menu to send them to the Royal Marsden.

Images are sent to one of two folders on PACS Exchange – the emergency folder or the elective folder. Images in the emergency folder are available for 18 hours and images in the elective folder are available for eight days. Croydon University Hospital sends all its images to the elective folder so the Royal Marsden can access them for eight days.

In the past these images would not even fit onto one CD and it would have taken hours to burn them all. Now they can be transferred in a matter of minutes. Croydon University Hospital produces around 450 CDs a month so there are big savings to be made with PACS Exchange. Paperwork can also be done in advance to save any last minute rushes.

Information governance is excellent with PACS Exchange. Images are automatically encrypted as they are sent on N3. Croydon University Hospital can also track what images are going where, and who has sent, viewed and transferred them onto the Royal Marsden's own system. Croydon University Hospital can even see who has deleted them so the life of each image is audited from end to end.

‘Information governance is excellent with PACS Exchange'

Peter Norris, Project Manager at Croydon University Hospital says the hospital has gained two main benefits from PACS Exchange.

‘PACS Exchange allows MDT meetings to take place on time with all the right images to hand. There is a meeting taking place today in half an hour and we are just about to send the images to PACS Exchange now. It is so quick and easy.

‘It also means that CDs are a thing of the past which is great news time wise and also saves money because we do not have to pay for the moveable media or a courier to take them to the Royal Marsden. PACS Exchange has freed up space at Croydon University Hospital too because we no longer needs our film library.'