The Government of Jersey’s Health and Community Services (HCS) Department, which provides healthcare for over 100,000 Jersey residents, has contracted BridgeHead Software to implement HealthStore® to consolidate all medical images in a central repository accessible by clinical and support staff.

HealthStore is set to underpin HCS’s Enterprise Imaging strategy as part of its overarching aim to become one of the most digitally advanced healthcare systems in the world.

BridgeHead’s Enterprise Imaging expertise will enable Jersey’s Health and Community Services to consolidate, store, protect, and share medical images of all types and formats from across a diverse array of clinical departments. This Enterprise Imaging initiative feeds into the Government of Jersey’s strategic vision to attain the highest level of digital healthcare maturity, Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) Stage 7 from the Healthcare Information and Management Society (HIMSS).

The Government of Jersey’s Health and Community Services aims to put the individual at the heart of the care process, where data is used intelligently to enhance the care provision for its citizens in both hospital and community environments, encompassing both health and social care.

HealthStore will help overcome the issues that were being experienced by HCS where images were stored on individual departmental systems that could be difficult to protect, manage, and access. It will improve workflow efficiency and clinician productivity by streamlining access to, and sharing of, medical images; across departments, and also with external healthcare organisations.

Paul Morris, Digital Health Programme Manager, in Health and Community Services said: “The HCS team identified a wide range of imaging information that needed to be brought together to provide a true 360-degree patient view. This included images and supporting data from Radiology, Cardiology, Endoscopy, Ophthalmology, Dermatology, Retinal Screening, Dental Clinic, the Diabetes Centre; with integrations to our Electronic Patient Record & Electronic Document Management systems. We needed an imaging platform that offered a central repository where any image, regardless of the source application, could be stored in a standard format, and made available to our healthcare professionals, all accessible using a simple and intuitive user interface.”

HealthStore is a cost effective, independent Enterprise Imaging platform that manages both DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) and non-DICOM data. Outside of its VNA functionality, HealthStore also offers the ability for healthcare providers to ingest data from other applications.

Michael Chambers, Major Programmes Architect, at Health and Community Services said: “Throughout the selection process, the BridgeHead team were able to demonstrate how HealthStore could aggregate our medical images from across a range of disparate clinical systems, then manage, store, and protect them. Once in HealthStore, those images can be quickly searched and retrieved by our clinicians, as and where they need them, on any authorised device – whether at the hospital or out in the community. And as HealthStore integrates with other primary applications, such as the EPR and PACS; our clinicians can easily access our images, in patient context, all from a single workstation. This gives users one place to go – with just a few clicks, they can get all of the relevant information they need when consulting, diagnosing, or treating a patient.”

The HealthStore deployment will focus on Radiology in the first instance, before widening the scope to bring medical images into the system from other clinical departments.

Jim Beagle, CEO and President, BridgeHead Software, comments, “We’re delighted to be working with such a visionary, leading healthcare provider in the Government of Jersey’s Health and Community Services. The HCS team understand that data is a strategic asset and the lifeblood of quality care delivery. With diagnostic teams relying so heavily on medical imaging, it is vital that clinicians, whether working within a department or part of a multidisciplinary team, have quick and easy access to all of the information they need to make informed care decisions. We are very excited to be part of HCS’ strategic plans and help it on its digital transformation journey.”