Salford Royal Hospital as part of the Northern Care Alliance has become the latest site to roll out the Sectra - Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS Based Reporting) for reporting on diagnostic imaging.
Reporters and radiologists at Salford Royal Hospital, which is part of the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA), are now able to use a single platform to both view and report on imaging studies, rather than having to navigate separate systems to provide reports that inform patient care, diagnoses and treatment.
This new milestone means that all of the NCA’s hospital sites in the localities of Salford, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham are now live with the new technology. This development will provide patients and clinicians with faster results across the Trust as well as seamless connectivity for radiological studies across the sites.
Deployed as part of an enterprise imaging agreement signed with Sectra in 2020, the PACS is already used by clinicians in NHS hospitals, who are part of the Greater Manchester Imaging Network across the region to view, analyse and interrogate millions of patient scans including x-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, and MRI.
This significant achievement in the programme is expected to release a substantial amount of time for busy professionals in the region’s trusts, as they support care for a population of more than three million people.
The technology is set to be rolled out across Greater Manchester throughout 2025 and 2026.
Christian Kasmeridis, divisional managing director for imaging at the Northern Care Alliance said: “This is a great opportunity for teams to come together to improve the patient experience and journey, by bringing our radiological services together across the Northern Care Alliance footprint. The feedback from the reporting radiological workforce has been extremely encouraging and the solution has been implemented by the dedicated staff in the department because of their commitment to improving patient care. We look forward to the implementation of the solution across all the GM Trusts and the significant benefits of collaborative working to follow.”
A full range of benefits are expected as more trusts move to PACS-based reporting. The advantages of PACS are profound as it offers efficient storage solutions of medical images and critical patient data, which can be accessed and reported from any Greater Manchester site, to improve the patient journey and ultimately their care.