BridgeHead Deploys Healthcare Data Management Solution With Dell DX6000

BridgeHead Software Ltd.
announced the implementation of its Healthcare Data Management
solution at City
Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, as well as announcing its joint
effort with Dell to provide a comprehensive Vendor Neutral Archive to the
hospital.

The Trust first engaged with BridgeHead for the scanning and
archiving and integrated backup and DR solutions to support its Meditech
healthcare information system. After working with the Trust, and proving its
capability in data and storage management, BridgeHead engaged with Dell,
another of Sunderland’s partners, as part of a pan-European pilot to
prove interoperability of BridgeHead’s Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) solution on
Dell’s DX6000 platform.
 

The role of the pilot is to bring together patient data from
different imaging technologies into a single, unified repository. BridgeHead
provides the holistic VNA that manages both administrative and clinical
information generated by the Trust, which is underpinned by Dell’s DX storage
platform. Once contained within the archive, the Trust’s data can then be made
available to any device at the point of patient care. An analysis of the
solution concluded that it increased the amount of time clinicians spent with
patients, and reduced the time the Trust’s ophthalmic department spent dealing
with hard copy images.

One of Dell’s partners in Europe, BridgeHead is active on
several pilots with Dell at a number of European hospitals, and was with Dell
at this year’s European Congress of Radiology in Vienna.

BridgeHead Software is the only Dell partner that manages both
clinical and administrative data. The holistic interoperability BridgeHead
makes possible is unique, as most other providers of Vendor Neutral Archiving
offer solutions that manage only part of a hospital’s data – image data from
Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) only, for example. BridgeHead streamlines, protects and simplifies all of a Trust’s
data, from X-rays right through to emails.

"Our journey with
BridgeHead started with the requirement to secure and protect the data from our
Healthcare Information System. BridgeHead not only demonstrated their
competency and expertise in this regard, but opened our eyes to some of their
other capabilities. This led to our embarking on the pilot programme with both
BridgeHead and Dell for a vendor neutral archive – initially focusing on
archiving our Ophthalmic Imaging System," said Andy Hart, director of
IT & IG at City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust.

Andy continued: "At City
Hospitals Sunderland, our focus is on ensuring patient safety and quality of
care. To underpin this, it is vital that the information we have on our
patients is stored, secured, correlated and made accessible for our clinicians.
Working with BridgeHead and Dell in deploying their complementary solutions has
allowed our staff to spend more time with patients and on patient care. This is
a clear example of how IT can truly support the day-to-day running of a
hospital."

Jim Beagle, CEO of BridgeHead, said: "We’ve been
working with City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust for some time now
in relation to protecting their patient data and have forged a strong strategic
relationship with their IT department. It’s great to see a hospital with a
dynamic, forward thinking approach to resolving their data management
challenges."

He continued, "As for
the pilot of Sunderland’s Vendor Neutral Archive, working with Dell in both a
strategic and technological capacity has been excellent. With the breadth of
Dell’s hardware and services in conjunction with BridgeHead’s data and storage
management capabilities, the joint offering has already proved hugely
successful. In fact, some of the participating hospitals piloting the solution,
having recognised the value it brings to their organisations, have broadened
the remit of the programme into managing data from other departments – which is
a great endorsement. BridgeHead looks forward to continuing our relationship
with Dell."

As BridgeHead’s second-annual Healthcare Data Management survey
confirmed in February, most UK hospitals want more control over the storage and
management of their medical image data, seen as the top cause of healthcare
data growth.