Mid Yorkshire Hospitals has invested in an EMC storage system to improve the efficiency of its IT infrastructure in cardiology units across three hospital sites.
The cardiology units in Wakefield (Pinderfields), Pontefract and Dewsbury hospitals needed to improve their process for storing and archiving cardiac ultrasound images, which had previously been uploaded to DVD and stored manually at each hospital.
Before, physiologists working on the units were unable to share patient records with other units and between each site easily, which often led to the data being held up between departments. By storing the images manually on DVD, it also took up physiologist time in locating the records and loading them onto their systems.
The EMC solution provides one central storage system for the cardiology units, and is capable of archiving patient data and retrieving records quickly. The new investment means that the units now benefit from quicker access to data, which can be shared easily between all sites and with other departments. The storage will also improve the security of the data, and make it easier for the hospitals to archive patient data.
Alison Carr, clinical physiology services manager at Mid Yorkshire, said: “The new storage solution has greatly improved the team’s efficiency at Mid Yorks. We are now able to spend more time focusing on our patients, and don’t have to worry about patient data being held up in other departments."
She said: "This new way of working with patient data will have a positive impact on patient care and diagnostic waits as we are able to access their files quickly and share them with other staff members easily. Not only can we now offer a better quality of service to patients, but the number of patients we can see has increased."
EMC partner Esteem Systems deployed the system for the hospitals, which includes the Centera archiving solution and the VNX2 SAN (storage area networking) platform.