Bradford NHS extends independent VNA to manage cardiology data

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has completed the second stage of its data management project by extending the use of BridgeHead Software’s Independent Clinical Archive (ICA), HealthStore, to assist in its long-term storage strategy.

Bradford has successfully migrated a total of 51,040 cardiology studies - just over 1.7m images - equating to roughly 10TB of data from its legacy GE archive into BridgeHead’s HealthStore. In addition, HealthStore is now the active archive for Bradford’s newly-created cardiology data, averaging around 1,000 studies a month.

As part of its wider data management strategy, Bradford embarked on the second phase of the project with a number of objectives in mind: firstly, to ensure that its cardiology data was part of a comprehensive and robust data protection environment, safeguarded from risk of loss, corruption or disaster; and, secondly, to centrally store its cardiology data, using open standards, so that it would be accessible and available to those that need it, when they need it – including other trusts.

After having already completed one of the UK's-largest image migration projects, where Bradford collaborated with BridgeHead Software to migrate 1.7 million radiology studies - equating to 126 million DICOM images and 27 Terabytes of data - out from its incumbent AGFA PACS and into BridgeHead’s Independent Clinical Archive, HealthStore, it was a natural progression to move on to do the same with other content locked away in other vendors systems. Cardiology was chosen as the first additional content type.

Geraldine Metcalfe, head of department for cardiology at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We were delighted that cardiology was selected for the next stage of the data management project as our legacy GE archive was ageing and needed replacing.”

Cindy Fedell, director of informatics at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, added: “Although we initially deployed BridgeHead’s HealthStore next-generation VNA as part of our exit from the National PACS Contracts, our strategy was always to break down our clinical information silos, centralise and standardise our data, and make it available to users and applications on demand. This cardiology project was the next step in our evolution as we move ever closer to realising our vision of a true Electronic Patient Record.”

And Jim Beagle, chief executive of BridgeHead Software, said: “I commend Bradford on continuing to realise the true benefits of BridgeHead’s Independent Clinical Archive. Not only did it help with their short-term requirements as the trust migrated and took ownership of its radiology PACS data; the trust understood that by utilising it in other clinical departments, BridgeHead’s HealthStore can act as a central repository for the entire healthcare enterprise, enabling a true, patient-centric system and providing an essential source of information for a holistic, electronic patient record.”