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Efforts to replace national PACS systems with those procured and managed locally are coming to a close in the South, NorthWest and West Midlands regions. On 30 June this year, 84 trusts will leave the national contract, leaving 44 remaining.  Many thanks to everyone who has been involved with these procurements and data localisation.  It has been a huge job but we are almost there!

My focus has turned recently to the next wave of procurement.  20 Trusts in London and 26 in the North East, East and East Midlands (NEEEM) areas are now gearing up to move off the national contract.  The NHS Supply Chain recently held a very successful conference in Nottingham that was very well attended.  This provided an opportunity for trusts to listen to Erika Denton, the National Clinical Director for Diagnostics at NHS England along with various speakers from NHS Supply Chain and myself. 

The event also provided a great opportunity for people to engage with various suppliers in the RIS/PACS space leading to many productive conversations. 

We have also re-launched regional 'Exit Boards' in Leeds, London and Cambridge and keenly encourage all trusts to ensure they are represented on these boards which take place monthly. To get involved, please email pacs.query@hscic.gov.uk.

Many thanks!

Alasdair Thompson, PACS Programme Head

NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) closed on the 31 March 2013. From 1 April 2013 some of the functions previously undertaken by NHS CFH, including PACS, were transferred to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).

PACS can be contacted at pacs.query@hscic.gov.uk or visit www.hscic.gov.uk/pacs.

Dr Tony Goldstone has been appointed as Chair of the Exit Board for the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber. We would like to thank Alan Baker for chairing the Exit Board to date and welcome Tony into his new role.

Invitations have been extended to trusts exiting from June 2014, in the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber to attend the exit board.

An Exit Board has also been established to support trusts in the East Midlands and East of England – chaired by Dr Dan Rose

Those trusts who are exiting in June 2013 continue to engage with Accenture to progress their exit plans.

The slot planning process for trusts exiting from June 2014 is currently being developed and will be communicated shortly.

EA4 Assurance – All assurance activities relating to the EA4 localisation have completed.

Exit scripts:
The documentation to explain the purpose of the exit scripts and the supporting process are available on the nww website and trusts are requested to review and familiarise themselves with these.

AIM Reconfiguration Change (formerly reversion script) – This change was implemented successfully at Mid Cheshire on the 28th February as a First of Type (FOT) and the trust successfully exited the LSP contract.

GSPS Script - We continue to work with CSC to monitor progress of the GSPS script at a trust level. RFCs are being raised for all trusts who have confirmed they require the script; initially CSC is focusing on those trusts with the largest volume of images, and consortia to implement the script. Trusts must provide details to CSC of the following pre-requisites during exit engagement:

• Details of either a dedicated workstation to install the GSPS Script tool onto (workstation software will be removed by GE beforehand) or the trust can opt to run it on the Print Server; and
• Details of a Trust storage/share location where the GSPS Annotation Output file can be deposited.

Multi threading of batches commenced at Royal Devon and Exeter (FOT site) and this has been extended to all sites operating the script.

RIS
Lessons Learned from the Cheshire and Mersey Consortia are now available on the nww website.

The South West Consortia successfully cutover to their new RIS Instance on the 9th February, Surrey and Sussex Consortia on the 25th March and Greater Manchester also cutover to their new RIS supplier on 20th April.

Trusts are reminded that they should follow the agreed cutover process which was provided in the template TAN.

TANS
Outstanding Transitional Assistance Notices (TANS) should be submitted immediately, please send to Barbara Blue – barbara.blue@hscic.gov.uk

Data repatriation:
Data repatriation projects have been initiated to investigate the speed of data return, using different trusts  and different mechanisms of data repatriation:

St Mary's Hospital (Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust) have also started to retrieve data using the DICOM Q/R method via GE.

1. Data repatriation across N3 using a “file copy” method has been kicked off using Barts Health NHS Trust as the pilot site. This is the reverse of the mechanism that was used to ingest data into MIA.
2. DICOM Q/R across N3 - using the proposed BT standard approach of initiating a DICOM Query retrieve across N3 to bring the data back to the trust. This is being done at The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital using the Sectra PACS and the Sectra move engine to initiate the Q/R.
3. Following a meeting with BT, Sectra & HP, on 2nd October at Barts, it was mentioned by HP, that there are gateway nodes at each of the Data Centers, which could be used for extracting data directly via a server and an archive. BT has confirmed that technically this is possible and have agreed in principle that they would offer this as a mechanism for trusts to get their data back.

Exit and termination:
Termination notices have  been issued to BT on behalf of:

• Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (St Marys, Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals) - exit date end August 2013 (this has now slipped from 31st March 2013).
• Barts Health NHS Trust (Barts and the London, Newham and Whipps Cross hospitals – exit date Jan / Feb 2014.

London Exit Board

The recent London Exit Board heralded the beginning of focussed exit planning in close collaboration with all London Trusts; BT; and Sectra. Aside to Trusts exiting this year, we are embarking on an ambitious programme of works to support the remaining Trusts who will be exiting either next June 2014 or at an agreed point up until July 2015. To enable this, we have been progressing a range of localisation options with BT in addition to forging strong links with each Trust as part understanding their intentions and what needs to be put in place at local level.

Many London Trusts attended the recent and timely NHS Supply Chain event in Nottingham which not only helped Trusts better understand process and key milestones, it also gave opportunity to discuss and consider future PACS solutions.

Moving forward, we will be supporting local Trusts through the localisation phase in addition to offering advice as Trusts build up robust business cases as part re-procurement.

Events

Radiology and PACS Conference. 13 May, Hallam Conference Centre, London

Alasdair Thompson is a keynote speaker at this year's conference, talking to delegates about the operational requirements for the end of the local service provider contracts. Visit the website for more details.

UKRC 2013, 10 – 12 June, ACC Liverpool

Alasdair Thompson will be speaking at this year's United Kingdom Radiological Congress (UKRC) annual national conference on medical imaging.

Alasdair's session, titled PACS & RIS Procurements—Local IT decision making a DH Vision, will take place on Tuesday 11 June. For more information about the event, visit the UKRC website.

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