Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust is set to deploy modern medical imaging technology from Sectra to ensure radiology teams have digital imaging tools for making effective diagnoses.

Sectra’s technology will include a picture archiving and communication system (PACS), which will help to streamline access to images and improve efficiencies.

The enterprise imaging solution will enhance how healthcare teams assess x-rays, CTs, MRIs and other scans. It will also open up new possibilities around AI and allow specialists at Great Ormond Street to share their expertise beyond the trust.

Anthony Harper, assistant director of ICT at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said: “This upgrade in digital diagnostic tools will bring a range of benefits to our staff as they report on imaging that informs diagnoses and allows clinicians to monitor disease progression for patients.

“Day to day this will make all the difference for our radiologists, who will be better able to manipulate large imaging datasets using modern techniques – such as 4D tracheal CTs, optical coherence tomography, functional MR urography, and more.

“We will widen our utilisation of advanced image processing, whilst enhanced ways of displaying imaging information in multi-disciplinary teams will enrich collaboration within the hospital.”

Radiology professionals will be able to view and report on images in a single system, limiting the need to move between systems. In addition, voice recognition will be integrated into it.

The system will also help to improve the working lives of radiology teams. Sectra’s technology will integrate with the trust’s electronic health record (EHR), improving how images are launched in theatres during procedures. Staff will also be able to review historical imaging and layer different scans in order to examine the progression of illnesses.

The trust signed a contract with Sectra in September 2022 and draws on the Sectra One subscription model that enables easy scalability of the enterprise imaging solution.

Jane Rendall, UK managing director for Sectra, said: “Great Ormond Street Hospital has long been a global exemplar when it comes to so many areas of paediatric medicine, including diagnostic imaging.

“I hope that the deployment of a new imaging system will help to provide tools that will further innovation at the trust. And I look forward to working in strong partnership to share learnings.”

Great Ormond Street is not alone in turning to Sectra. In June of this year, Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust signed a deal with Sectra for enterprise imaging as a fully cloud service.