Soliton IT is delighted to announce the successful Go-Live of Radiology+ within Cobalt Health.
A unique scanning centre based in Cheltenham, Cobalt sees over 75,000 patients per year at their Imaging Centre, their Birmingham-based Institute of Translational Medicine (ITM) and with their mobile MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanners which travel nationally. Along with MRI, CT, X-ray and Ultrasound imaging, Cobalt also offers specialist PET/CT scanning across their Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire regions.
In February 2019, Cobalt Health nominated Soliton IT to support their imaging services with industry-leading clinical workflow applications Radiology+ RIS and Share+, especially configured to support the PET/CT functionalities and specialist workflow.
Soliton IT started the implementation in March 2020, taking on a deployment task during a trying period in healthcare, which tested the team and called on their prior experience in clinical IT project management. Data migration, for instance, needed added diligence when migrating data from a non-RIS legacy application. In addition, the nature of Cobalt’s healthcare offering meant that a finance module needed to be incorporated into the workflow, which would allow users to link each attendance with a customer’s record, apply charges to each study, create invoices and receipts, and run corresponding statistical reports to capture financials. Naturally, Covid-19 legislation meant that Cobalt staff’s time was already limited; the team had to devote their manpower to providing healthcare services during the crisis. In terms of accessibility, fewer onsite implementation periods and postponements due to the national lockdown resulted in both Cobalt and Soliton IT having to be flexible and open to ever-changing targets.
On 14th September 2020, Cobalt Health went live with the new application – overcoming complex migrations, new development requirements and an international pandemic which brought new obstacles to the standard deployment tasks. Soliton IT’s implementation team were particularly enthused on the positive approach from all users, and how well the teams worked together to resolve issues.
Traci Dean, Project Manager, comments:
“This project, although smaller than a large NHS Trust, was still demanding due to the additional workflows required for private work. The finance module initially presented new challenges, but it was developed in stages with input from the Finance Team – each part was completed to ensure the final module worked exactly as required. Although Cobalt’s Project Team was small, everyone worked hard to support the project – there was a real sense of support amongst the team. The new RIS meant many changes to workflows and processes, however everyone welcomed the change and participated in in-depth workflow analysis – resulting in a system that was configured exactly to requirements.”
