An NHS-wide cloud for sharing diagnostic images and intelligence across the health service could mean huge economies of scale, stronger collaboration, and rapid digitisation. Sectra’s UK managing director Jane Rendall and chief technology officer Fredrik Gustavsson explore.
Pressure to improve sustainability and reduce isolation in healthcare has renewed the hunger for a different approach to IT. Installing software in individual organisations, and then managing it locally on hospital servers, is a resource hungry method that for many organisations is starting to reach its limits in the race to digital maturity.
The UK is in an almost unique position to accelerate its digital progress and embrace truly national economies of scale by exploiting cloud technology, something that has already started to be seen in diagnostic disciplines.
Northern Ireland, for example, has one of the most effective and largest scale picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) in the world. By exploiting cloud, a single imaging system is now accessible by healthcare professionals across the whole of Northern Ireland, allowing different disciplines to access a patient’s radiology record from almost any location.
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