CHU de Charleroi, is a large, multi-site public hospital organisation based in Belgium's fifth biggest city. It has 1,424 beds and almost 5,000 members of staff, working in most medical and surgical disciplines. In line with its aim to provide high quality care and a superior experience to all patients, CHU de Charleroi is working with Carestream Health to ensure patient information, including multimedia clinical objects, can be shared securely and reliably across its sites and with authorised external parties.
Since January 2014, the hospital has been using the CARESTREAM Clinical Collaboration Platform viewer to visualise and distribute patient multimedia clinical objects, from images and videos to ECG. The Clinical Collaboration Platform offers different modules for the structured acquisition, management, storage, distribution and sharing of Patient Multimedia Clinical Data. This includes a zero-footprint vendor-neutral image viewer that uses a web browser or information embedded in an EMR portal to provide easy access to imaging data and patient information by onsite or remote clinicians. With a unified core that is scalable and modular, clients can install just the parts of the Clinical Collaboration Platform they need to support their existing systems. This was a key driver in CHU de Charleroi's choice of technology partner. The hospital needed a perfectly modular solution to support its enterprise PACS strategy, which seeks to combine the development of internal modules with the purchase of external modules only where these add real value.
CHU de Charleroi already had its own, internally-developed VNA in place, which it used to store data, images and other multimedia patient clinical data, together with a DICOM router tasked with bringing intelligence to the management and processing of DICOM flows. Using a lighter-than-usual version of the CARESTREAM Workflow Manager to provide the perfect interface with its existing VNA, the Clinical Collaboration Platform‘s viewer module has been fully integrated into its existing system to give online access to these files to patients and authorised staff.
"The architecture put in place allows access via the viewer module to all multimedia exam results, with total transparency, and to extremely high standards," comments Jean-Pierre Binon, Director of Information Technology and Communications at CHU de Charleroi. "It is possible to navigate easily, and with the same level of performance, throughout the whole of a patient’s history. We have 16 years of historical files accessible on line through the system now," he adds.
Carestream's technology also allows the hospital's systems to interface with the regional EMR network - the Réseau de Santé Wallon (RSW). This enables the secure exchange of digitalised medical documents outside of the hospital for review by other authorised healthcare personnel, such as GPs, other hospitals and patients across the whole country. By enabling the safe, reliable and speedy exchange of information between medical care providers, as well as with their patients, diagnosis and treatment can be easier, quicker and more efficient. Patients are less likely to undergo repeated or unnecessary testing, saving them inconvenience and expense, while at the same time engaging them more closely in their own care.
Access to the system could not be simpler. As the viewer is a zero footprint tool, it can be used on a wide range of devices, from all types of mobile phone to tablets and desktop computers, with no need to download any software. It uses a single, intuitive user interface that requires no particular training or experience to use. Patients who have given their consent for the sharing of their information through the RSW can access their own images though the RSW portal. Similarly, doctors working within any Belgian hospital or in a private GP practice can access the imaging system of the CHU de Charleroi directly from their local EMR with no need to re-authenticate themselves.
As well as being simple, access is very secure. "Carestream's solution is one of only a few such systems to have satisfied the homologation criteria required to participate in the RSW by the network's operator, FRATEM (the Regional Federation of Medical Telematics Associations). Clients such as CHU de Charleroi, and their patients, can have complete confidence that the technology used meets all of the security requirements for a health data management and storage system of this type," says Ignace Wautier, Carestream Healthcare IT Business Development Manager for Northern Europe. Internally to the hospital, this security rests on strong integration with an Active Directory to authenticate and manage rights of access. Externally, via the RSW, tokens are used to provide authentication, recording the identity of anyone requesting access to a file and putting a time limit on their access.
About Carestream Health
Carestream is a worldwide provider of dental and medical imaging systems and IT solutions; X-ray imaging systems for non-destructive testing; and precision contract coating services for a wide range of industrial, medical, electronic and other applications - all backed by a global service and support network.