Niagara, Hamilton can now share diagnostic images

NHS Chief of Radiology Dr. Amit Mehta: “Access to a digital image repository across LHINs, along with the recent acquisition of two state-of-the-art 128-slice CT scanners by Niagara Health, means patients have access to the best possible care here in Niagara.”

Niagara Health System and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton have begun archiving diagnostic images and reports to a Diagnostic Imaging Repository (DI-r), a key step towards integrating electronic patient records for hospitals in Ontario.

These are the first two hospitals in the local HNHB LHIN (the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network, also known as LHIN 4) to join the South Western Ontario Diagnostic Imaging Repository Network.

This network is part of Ontario’s larger DI-r and Picture Archiving Communication Systems (PACS) initiative. The DI-r project will connect all participating hospitals in LHINs 1, 2, 3 and 4 to the data centre housed in London, Ont., enabling caregivers to share diagnostic images and reports.

Benefits of this repository include:

• Secure, quick and easy access by clinicians and radiologists to a patient’s diagnostic imaging record, including CT scans, ultrasound, mammograms and MRI scans, allowing them to diagnose regardless of patient origin and where the images were acquired.
• Enhanced clinician collaboration and knowledge transfer, resulting in better treatment, fewer retakes and a reduction in radiation exposure.
• Treatment plans developed through collaborating with specialists located in other communities.

“Until now, our patients’ digital images have been stored in a central archive database in Niagara, allowing physicians and health professionals throughout Niagara access to MRI scans and other digital images in their office or in the hospital,” says NHS Chief of Radiology Dr. Amit Mehta.

“Access to a digital image repository across LHINs, along with the recent acquisition of two state-of-the-art 128-slice computed tomography (CT) scanners by Niagara Health, means patients have access to the best possible care here in Niagara,” says Dr. Mehta. “Images acquired in Niagara will be able to be viewed by Hamilton caregivers and eventually provincewide. This is very important as we try to minimize the radiation dose to our patients through the elimination of repeat studies.”

Niagara Health began using the repository in mid-September, and physicians in Niagara will be trained on the new technology over the next few months.

Other hospitals in HNHB LHIN will be connected to the DI-r over the next two years, including Hamilton Health Sciences by early 2010. The goal is for 100% of images taken in the delivery of hospital-based healthcare to Ontario patients to be digitally stored and shareable among healthcare providers in the province. «