With every trust in England now using PACS, the national PACS programme has been supporting NHS trusts to electronically and securely share patient images and reports where these support patient referral and treatment.

Previously, when a patient’s scan needed to be transported from one hospital to another it was necessary  either to send the images with the patient, or ‘burn’ them onto password-protected  CDs and then have them transported to the receiving site, often by costly courier services.

This could lead to delays in diagnosis and treatment, lost images and inconvenience for the patient, who would have to spend time waiting for their information to arrive at the receiving hospital or be re-scanned.

To address this issue, we have been working to make available a ‘toolkit’ of image and report sharing solutions to trusts, with trusts deciding locally on which solutions are most appropriate to their needs. These include:

• Image Exchange Portal - a web-based application from Burnbank Systems which is now being used across most hospital trusts in England.
• Accenture PACS Connect (APC) – a solution provided through Accenture (the local service provider for PACS in the East Midlands, North East, Yorkshire & Humber and East of England) which has been piloted across a number of trusts and is now being made more widely available.
• PACS Exchange – a solution from BT which has been adopted by a number of trusts in London.