PACS now used in every English trust, DH says

28 Dec 2007

Digital imaging technology is now being used in every trust in England, the Department of Health has announced.

Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) was promised as part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) by the government in April 2004.

The pledge given by then health minister, John Hutton, to deliver the systems within three years has been met and is counted as one of the big successes of the national programme.

The final trust to receive a PACS as part of NPfIT was Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust on 10 December 2007, marking the completion of implementations in 127 trusts across England. (Around 50 trusts already had PACS before the central initiative was announced.)

Health secretary Alan Johnson said: “The benefits of the introduction of PACS in terms of improved patient care are massive. This innovative technology speeds up and improves the accuracy of diagnosis, saves time and improves the quality of care.

“Trusts are reporting that the time taken for radiologists and radiographers to issue reports to clinicians have typically been halved from more than six days to less than three and these report turnaround times continue to fall with some hospitals reporting all imaging within 24 hours.”

PACS medical director, radiologist, Erika Denton, said: “We all recognise the role that PACS is playing in improving patient care. Prior to the advent of NPfIT it had taken 50 trusts some 14 years to implement PACS. But in the last three years, the pace has accelerated massively; the speed and scope of the roll-out has been an incredible achievement.

"It’s a credit to the way that NHS Connecting for Health, strategic health authorities, trusts and IT service providers have worked together.”

External praise has been fulsome, too. In recent months the PACS programme received the accolade of 'Public Sector Project of the Year' at Computing Magazine's 'Awards of Excellence', and the ‘Healthcare IT award’ at the Health Business Awards.

Some big challenges remain for PACS, notably the issue of data sharing. The technology offers the promise of sharing images within and between health communities for wide range of purposes including referrals, expert opinions, teaching and multi-disciplinary teamwork.

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Reader's Comments

PACS glory

28 Dec 07 16:26

PACS was already a great success within the NHS before NPfIT and a no-brainer as far as business cases go, so to see the 'Programme' take credit and win awards for something which was taking course anyway, somewhat annoys me.

The only thing that needed any type of management was ensuring that the data centres were up and running to receive and share images. Has the programme achieved that? I think not!

Benefits frustrated via NPfIT

03 Jan 08 17:16

As the previous comment, this was happening anyhow. NPfIT created a framework to ensure that everyone could move forwards quickly, and that was good, forcing organisations to prioritise funding.

The price was significantly more than local schemes, and this had to be locally funded, including N3 network needs. The main reason for the NPfIT scheme was supposed to be seamless sharing of images, which has not been achieved. Local NHS IT and clinical teams have instead worked through exchanging images between hospitals when patients travel.

The success of PACS has largely been despite CfH.

PACS success

04 Jan 08 09:34

The only useful thing to come out of the NPfIT involvement was the DH letter compelling trusts to adopt PACS, with a deadline. A good number of trusts had already adopted PACS, and a market existed. The hard part for imaging departments was to push through a business case against all the other priorities that cash-strapped Trusts have. The element of compulsion meant that even poor value NPfIT PACS cases were given the nod...

Central procurement has not delivered value for money for Trusts, has ruined the market in PACS and Radiology Information Systems, and has not ensured adherence to technology standards and interoperability. A pretty poor show given the hype.

If anyone deserves credit in this sorry episode, it is hard pressed imaging departments and system administrators who have got on with the practical elements of implementing PACS, whilst being pushed hard to deliver shorter waiting times.

A bit like saying DVD players are popular

07 Jan 08 19:58

It is no greater achievement to put PACS in, than to have pursuaded consumers to buy DVD players and ditch VHS - it is just the ordinary standard - the shame is that we were a few years behind the USA on PACS.