AGFA HealthCare is pleased to announce the implementation of  its XERO® Exchange Network (XEN) across five NHS Trusts within South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw, UK. This deployment enables seamless image sharing among the different hospitals in the region. Significantly this XEN deployment includes both hospitals using AGFA HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging and a third-party PACS/RIS.

Easy, fast image sharing across hospitals in the region

Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust joins the XEN cross-enterprise network which has been used across the AGFA HealthCare’s PACS sites in Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Sheffield Children’s NHS Trust, Rotherham Hospital NHS Trust and Barnsley Hospital NHS Trust for some time.

The ability for Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS – which uses a third-party image management solution – to collaborate and share their Imaging record with the existing AGFA HealthCare sites brings many clinical benefits for clinical teams and the patients they serve. In addition, the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw XEN cross-enterprise network facilitates connection with organisations across the Yorkshire Imaging Collaborative (YIC) to better support patient pathways across regional boundaries.

“AGFA HealthCare’s XEN solution enables us to gain the benefits of sharing images with our colleagues at other hospitals in our region, without CDs or complex image sharing solutions. We can just use our XERO Universal Viewer, and it finds and displays the images we are looking for – effortlessly. And with images and reports available from all of the region’s NHS hospitals, XEN offers a step towards a true longitudinal patient imaging record, enabling us to begin creating a timeline view of all images, and providing the region with a stable, consistent and productive solution without any complications,” says Dr Sanjoy Nagaraja, Consultant Interventional Neuroradiologist at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Real-time federation across the network

With XEN, AGFA HealthCare’s XERO® technology becomes the foundation of a federated image network, enabling image sharing between departments, systems and locations. Unlike a traditional image sharing solution that ‘pushes and pulls’ image data, with XEN the XERO® Universal Viewer reaches out to multiple back-end image management systems simultaneously – including third-party image management systems throughout the network – queries them for the data needed, and streams the images to the user’s desktop. It all happens automatically, without any effort by the user.

There is less administrative burden on teams to support traditional image exchange methods, be that via electronic image exchange means or manually using DVD or similar technology to ensure images and reports reach the referring or reporting clinicians in a timely manner. Each facility can continue to use its own image management systems, and its own patient ID domain. Furthermore, the image data is not moved from where it resides; it is simply streamed to the user directly from the host system.

“We are delighted that we have delivered a strong added value to our long-term customers in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw, with XEN for image sharing, and furthermore that we have been able to bring Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS into sync with the rest of the region. Different imaging systems, patient IDs, physical networks or policies for requesting information can create complexity when sharing images across a network. What’s more, the time and effort of requesting and then transmitting image data slows down already-busy workflows, which can impact the timeliness of patient care and reduce patient satisfaction. Finally, when patients travel to different facilities for care, their images are spread out everywhere. XEN enables a federated image network, without traditional image sharing solutions or even a VNA. Image and data access is faster, and the workflow is smoother. And – importantly – the entire image sharing process is ‘invisible’: to care providers and patients,” says Mark Wild, UK Strategic Account Director, AGFA HealthCare.

 AGFA HealthCare extends its gratitude to the project teams, and looks forward to this strategic collaboration with the NHS.