Carestream Health has completed a Euros 8m project to install PACS across 20 sites of the Assistance Publique Des Hopitaux De Paris (APHP), a French public healthcare group.
The group wanted to move away from old film techniques and move to digital imaging in as many of their sites as possible. After going out to public tender, APHP chose Carestream to install fully functional Picture Archiving and Communications Systems over a two year period.
Carestream’s healthcare information solution consultant manager for Europe and the Middle East, Jean Christian Rives, told E-Health Europe: “APHP quickly found that PACS became a necessity because of all the new modalities they were implementing causing an increasing amount of data being produced. This became a problem for radiologists. They needed one system with one storage base.”
The group first went out to tender for digital PACS in 2005, and looked at many vendors. They wanted to be able to bring in one supplier who would be able to provide imaging to all 22 of the 52 sites where images are taken.
Rives said: “22 hospitals needed to be fully connected to the digital transformation agenda the group had. Two of these already used Agfa PACS and so the task of the project was to implement PACS in the 20 other sites and create individual repositories at each site to store data from the systems and give each person a unique patient identifier.
“In principle, this should tie in nicely with another Euros73m tender they have awarded to a consortium of partners, including Medisys and GE, to implement a new EPR system into the group. They will be responsible for finding a central solution to unite all images and records into one main repository, whilst maintaining the unique patient identifiers we have in place. This is something we are assisting them with.”
Carestream has now implemented a specially tailored solution to the 20 sites that intelligently integrates and automates each radiology department, optimising user efficiency and minimising non-essential tasks to deliver better patient care.
Early validation of the PACS architecture and software was completed at Trousseau Hospital, after which a challenging pace of equipping first one, and then two sites per month, was established. As each site became fully functional, the PACS was integrated with image capture modalities and with the RIS to simultaneously manage and archive medical images and information.
Carestream say that the solution is of particular benefit to radiologists due to its unique floating licence structure, which creates a virtual desktop. Users have the ability to access their personal preferences, such as display protocols, menus and tools, from any workstation at any location either inside or outside of the hospital. The licences follow the user regardless of location for greater flexibility and reduction in licensing costs.
Feedback from the radiologists using the system has been good to date, Carestream says, and APHP have now awarded a maintenance contract for the service to HP services.
The Kremlin-Bicetre University Hospital was one of the 20 sites where the PACS were installed. Here there are three radiology departments handling neurology, paediatrics and general radiology under the leadership of Professor Menu.
He said: “Not only did we have to choose a solution; above all we needed a company able to resolve all types of problems. With Carestream Health we achieved an intelligent partnership, one in which we had trust in both the software and the people.
“Our staff very quickly adopted the PACS workstation, recognising the capabilities for enhanced diagnosis. It took about ten minutes for our radiologists to be at ease with this user-friendly and intuitive tool for 90% of basic activity.”
APHP have also been pleased with the new systems and are glad to be making fast progress in their digital transformation agenda.
“We really felt we had a committed partner who shared our vision of this project,” said Doctor Reizine, Chief Radiologist at Lariboisière Hospital and a founding member of the team.
“The challenge we had set ourselves was met in full, both in terms of deadline and budget and the adoption of the PACS solution by a variety of users across the group.”
Carestream are currently assisting APHP in looking towards data sharing and more centralised storage. Currently images are stored locally and can only be viewed in the site where they were captured, not across the group. With over 5m patients receiving treatment from the group every year, a data sharing facility is being sought by APHP.
Rives said: “The issue is that the requirement for PACS is driven from the biomedical staff and not the clinical staff, so there hasn’t ever been an archiving system in place for the last 30 years. Now they are starting to think [in a]more IT-oriented [manner] and see the need so in the coming years this will come.”
Carestream is also assisting the French government in bringing private hospital groups up to date with the latest PACS technology.
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