The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust has installed a new WAN that the trust hopes will allow the high-speed transfer of PACS images between the two sites both now and in the future.
Bandwidth of 10 Gbps has been placed between the sites for the specific purpose of transferring PACS images. A significant amount of dark fibre – networking cables that have been installed but are not yet in operation – was included in the installation as part of the installation to ensure the system is futureproof.
"The flexibility offered by the dark fibre allows us to plan for the future whilst avoiding unnecessary costs in the short term," said Ward Priestman, director of information technology and information services at the trust. The installation was part of a wider project worth £4.5 million.
According to Elwers, the engineering company that installed the network, the extra bandwidth available can be increased by the trust without outside intervention 100 times should the occasion arise. Research carried out by the hospital estimated the volume of medical images would increase by 30.5% in the next seven years.
"I believe our innovative approach to designing a solution that would not only satisfy the NHS’s immediate connectivity requirements, but also put them in control of their own future, was key to Elwers winning this high-profile contract," said Stewart Bradshaw, managing director of Elwers.
Bradshaw told EHI that they had decided to put in extra capacity over fibre optic cable to make the system more scalable, instead of simply using standard copper wire of the kind usually employed for normal DSL connections. "The requirement for data transfer between the two sites isn’t going to be static… We felt that if they kept their own fibre link between the two trust sites they could scale up their equipment."
The two sites are around four miles apart. Bradshaw explained that rather than laying fresh cable the trust patched into existing fibre-optic cable. The trust would now not be disadvantaged by having to campuses several miles apart, he explained.
"The key innovation here is that this infrastructure allows a protection on their investment," Bradshaw told EHI, who praised the staff at the trust for their innovative approach to IT.