Healthcare Software Systems has deployed CRIS, its radiology information system, at 59 trusts, enabling them to transition off their National PACS Programme contracts by the 30 June deadline.
Some 84 trusts transitioned off national picture archiving and communications and RIS contracts and onto locally procured alternatives at the weekend.
At least two further waves of activity are expected in England’s PACS/RIS market as trusts in areas of England where the national contracts end next June get ready to make similar arrangements.
Under the terms of the original National PACS Programme in 2005, HSS was awarded RIS contracts in every English cluster except London, where the contract was awarded to iSoft.
While the refresh has opened up the market to new PACS providers, most of the trusts leaving the national contracts on Sunday have chosen to renew their RIS contracts with HSS.
Chris Yeowart, director of strategic business development at Wellbeing Software Group, which owns HSS, said the firm has had to increase the number of staff to cope with the workload.
“In the past six months, we’ve completed all the deployments. I think it’s an unprecedented scale of delivery because there are so many trusts with the same deadline, all taking the same system. We’ve gone from 35 to 95 people in the last 12 months.”
While RIS contracts had previously been managed by a local service provider, many trusts have now opted for direct contracts with HSS.
Yeowart welcomed the change. “One of the frustrations of the LSP model is that there’s been an added layer, and it’s not always clear what value that added layer has provided from the end user’s point of view.
"It’s just another layer of bureaucracy which has added cost to development.” Under the new arrangement, he said, HSS will be able to have a one-to-one relationship with trusts.
HSS’s new team includes radiographers, which will enable the firm to respond more effectively to customer requirements, said Yeowart.
Now that the initial migration was completed, HSS will be able to provide trusts with upgrades, he added.
“Over the next six months, we’re going to implement all the new functionality – all the upgrades and modules that are included in the new contract – so hopefully that’s when the trusts will start to feel they’re getting value from the new innovations.”
One of the new modules is HSS Communicator, which can automatically send an email or text message to a patient or referrer whenever the status of an appointment or report is changed.
This should help radiology departments to comply with the National Patient Safety Agency’s practice note 16, which calls for action to deal with ‘the early identification of failure to act on radiological imaging reports.’
The upgrades will also include PACSHealth’s DoseMonitor, an application that automates dose data collection and reporting.
The use of a third party application was part of HSS’s strategy, said Yeowart: “We don’t want to try and develop where something exists in the market already – we’d rather buy the best-of-breed solution.”