Radiology+ in UHCW NHS Trust

Serving a regional population of over 1-million people and responsible for managing 2 major hospitals in Coventry and Rugby, University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW) is one of the largest acute teaching hospitals in the UK; renowned for developing innovative medical education programmes and clinical research.

The multi-disciplinary Clinical Radiology (X-Ray) team performs nearly 450,000-examinations annually for an array of conditions; including diagnostic procedures and interventional treatment. This department is committed to the provision of modern imaging technologies and future proof working practices; enabling a high level of patient care.

The end of the previous contract

In June 2013, the Trust’s previous contract for Radiology IT systems was due to end. The contract had been part of the NHS National Programme for IT and had provided the Trust with their Radiology Information System (RIS), which had functionality but little scope for being tailored to local requirements and more importantly, was static in its future features and integration development.

New procurement options

The end of the previous contract provided an opportunity for University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, along with George Eliot NHS Trust and South Warwickshire Foundation Trust to work as a Consortium to investigate alternative solutions and propose bespoke features that were particular to the Trusts to procure a single instance of RIS. The three Trusts perform nearly 750,000 radiological examinations per year in total.
The Consortium had specific requirements for a replacement RIS; the system had to be developed with the Trust’s input from both users and IT administrators across the multi-Trust infrastructure and the solution had to prove cost-effective with effective process and performance measurables.

Radiology+ directly connects with patient database

Having evaluated a replacement RIS solution through the OJEU procurement process, the Consortium opted for an innovative platform from UK supplier, Soliton IT; a UK-based RIS developer with specific skills in system integration and experience in installing systems in multi-organisational configurations. The team evaluated Soliton’s leading solution – Radiology+ – an intuitive and functional application specific for the management of Radiology departments – which prompted positive feedback from the team – especially when using voice-recognition for quick and accurate reporting. Phil Lindley, IT Clinical Systems Managers comments: “The VR engine is intuitive and simple to use – we were particularly impressed with the flexibility of the interface and the personalisation that was offered. Integration with our PACS was seamless and the flexibility within the system has been refreshing.”

Integration into the Trust’s overhauled PACS (Insignia) proved flawless and instantly recognisable as a complete system with local configuration elements and, in order to meet the Trust’s file-sharing requirements, unified patient views to users. Similarly, the Radiology+ interface handled new patient data plus identification of the originating Trust for traceability and individual segregation of information for both statistical and administrative processing.

Now, Radiology+ is used by over 600-staff across all sites with excellent feedback from both users and administrators.