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TalkingPoint automates RIS orders for medical photography
Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust has deployed a TalkingPoint automation solution to drastically reduce administrative burden on the PACS administration team.
Salisbury uses SECTRA PACS to manage radiological images. Since 2016, the Trust also manages all medical photography within the PACS system. As clinicians can view the images from any workstation, the inclusion of medical photography in the PACS has proved to be extremely popular.
For example, nurses photograph wounds before re-dressing them. By using ipads and UniView, an app-based version of the PACS, clinicians can then view the image instantly, from anywhere in the Trust.
Capturing images into the PACS has helped to streamline care in this respect and, from an end user’s perspective, there is no obvious administration involved.
Emma Jefferd, Radiology Information Systems Manager explains: “The radiology information system (RIS) is where we create appointments for CTs, MRs etc. The issue is that Medical Photography images stored in the PACS are flagged as missing an RIS status.
Therefore, an entry must be created for a medical photography event for each case in the PACS. This is important as it helps the Radiologists when they are reviewing and reporting cases; if the patient has had surgery, photos taken during surgery and of their wound will be shown in the correct timeline in the patient record. It is helpful for the Radiologist to see in one place that the patient has been reviewed and that they have had photography.
Once we have created an event in the RIS, the RIS presents the events in order, and we can move the images in from the PACS. Although consultants can see the photos in the PACS (by searching using the patient number), by adding the image to the RIS system Radiologists can then see the entire record relating to the patient.”
Creating the RIS event for each case is a complicated and labour-intensive process and the number of medical photos being added to the PACS continues to increase.
Natasja Dumay, Senior RIS/PACS Administrator added: “I had been exploring the feasibility of storing ECGs in PACS so had contacted other hospitals that may have done this already. This is when we discovered that Plymouth Hospitals Trust does exactly this and that they were using a bespoke TalkingPoint script to automate the ordering process. So, when we initially contacted The TalkingPoint Team, it was from an ECG perspective, as I wanted to understand if they could help us.”
However, the Covid pandemic resulted in a rapid increase in the use of virtual consultations with patients sending in digital photos. This prompted the PACS team to focus on finding a solution to alleviate the administrative burden of managing the medical photography cases within the PACS.
Natasja adds: “We started to think about whether there was any way we could add value around the medical photography as it is so manually intensive, so we asked The TalkingPoint Team if it would be possible to develop an automated solution.”
Salisbury deployed TalkingPoint Commander, the workflow automation solution in May 2022. The automation has been in continuous use since, and currently processes approximately 350 cases a month.
Using TalkingPoint Commander has been a significant time-saver for the PACS team; enabling the team to focus on specialised PACS projects including bringing cardiology and endoscopy imaging into the PACS.
Adds Emma: “Before TalkingPoint Commander was in place, it was a full-time job for one person to bring all the medical images into the RIS system. Although this was normally managed by one of the PACS team, during extremely busy periods, a member of the medical photography team would also assist.
We’ve gone from needing full time (37.5 hours) working on this to around 2 hours a day. This has freed up time to work on more varied projects and to support our colleagues in cardiology and endoscopy as these departments are now sending their images into the PACS.”
