Seventeen trusts from the South West of England have signed a joint agreement with connected healthcare specialist Wellbeing Software and Insignia Medical Systems to facilitate cross organisational diagnostic reporting and image sharing through Wellbeing’s Cris Connect and Insignia’s Regional Image Sharing Platform (RISP).
Using Cris Connect, the region’s Trusts will be able to create combined specialist worklists to share reporting workload and create a single source for workflow. This means if a patient has a scan following a visit to A&E at Royal Cornwall, for example, the image would be shared automatically with sites in Plymouth and Bristol in case the patient needed to be moved for treatment. This ensures maximum reporting efficiency and improved patient care as clinicians can set up automatic rules, access specialist sources and use the same centralised, paperless information source.
The solution will be implemented in three separate waves. The first wave which begins in March 2021 will be to connect Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust. These two locations will provide valuable use case data to pave the way for the remaining Trusts who will join the programme later in the year in waves two and three.
Collectively, the 17 Trusts perform more than four million radiology studies per year, with 80% of these studies already being processed by Wellbeing Software’s radiology information system, Cris, already in use at 13 of the constituent Trusts. Those existing Wellbeing customers will also benefit from Advanced Order Comms which will be included in the deployment. Cris Advanced Order Comms enhances existing integrations by adding additional alerts to the workflow. These alerts highlight failed or cancelled order messages from the Order Comms system (OCS) to radiology and notify referrers of any patients who did not attend.
Kate Smith Commercial Director at Wellbeing Software said: “The 17 trusts across the region have recognised the crucial role that shared reporting plays in an effective healthcare strategy. Our Cris and Cris Connect solutions enable clinicians across different organisations and departments to collaborate to leverage both scarce and specialist skills. We are excited to continue working with the trusts that are already utilising our software, as well as forging relationships with new partners.”
Diagnostic images will be made available by Insignia Medical and communication between Cris and Insignia will ensure images are moved between Trusts and available on the central store when required.
Richard Dormer, Managing Director at Insignia said: “We are excited to be working with Wellbeing to deliver a revolutionary sharing service for the Trusts in the South West. This project opens many opportunities to transform how healthcare is delivered, to help deliver regional efficiencies and improve outcomes for patients.”
Sunita Berry, Managing Director of the Peninsula Cancer Alliance said: “We are excited to be implementing Cris Connect and working collaboratively with Wellbeing Software, whether that is building on an existing relationship or a new one. Digital technology is at the forefront of development in medicine, and we believe that by implementing image sharing technology across all platforms we will be able to improve the effectiveness of our treatments.”
Wellbeing will also integrate the Brainomix AI (a comprehensive stroke imaging solution), through the Wellbeing AI Connect platform into the CRIS radiology workflow.
Wellbeing’s Cris is the most widely used RIS in the UK and is currently deployed in over 700 locations, supporting more than 200,000 users and 25 million imaging events per year.