The Person behind the Project: EMRAD and Chesterfield Royal Hospital
Managing a complex project during a pandemic is no easy feat, but our talented team managed to do just that for Chesterfield Royal Hospital. In this blog, Chris Gregory, Senior Project Manager at Wellbeing Software, shares his experience of moving the Trust to the East Midlands Imaging Network (EMRAD) regional shared PACs.
My name is Chris Gregory, and I am a Senior Project Manager at Wellbeing Software. I have been working at Wellbeing Software for almost 10 years and have been lucky enough to work on a variety of different Radiology software projects and more recently on our Maternity and Electronic Health Record solutions. Daily I get to work with talented, driven and committed people both within Wellbeing and within our customer and partner space to achieve digital advances in the healthcare industry.
Wellbeing Software supplies hospitals and NHS Trusts with specialist clinical systems for connected health including our market-leading Radiology Information System Cris, we which are supplying to the East Midlands radiology consortium through our partner GE.
Cris was built by industry experts with unrivalled radiology workflow experience and we are currently operating in over 700 locations, supporting more than 200,000 users, and handling 25 million imaging events per year.
Welcoming Chesterfield Royal Hospital to EMRAD
Chesterfield Royal Hospital is a long-time Cris customer and as part of this project, we needed to migrate and merge its local Cris records into the centrally hosted and shared EMRAD Cris system. This ultimately creates a single radiology patient record across all seven of the NHS Trusts, enabling the regional hospitals to share diagnostic information.
The project involved the transfer of all radiology patient data as well as conducting healthcare system integrations with current PAS, Order Comms and PACS. We carried out complex data mapping to ensure synchronisation with existing EMRAD patient records, enabling them to be migrated safely while maintaining data integrity.
Wellbeing Software has completed similar work for existing EMRAD Trusts, which meant the approach and technical aspects were familiar. However, each project always has its own unique challenges to overcome. One of the challenges was to ensure that all of Chesterfield’s data mapped perfectly into the EMRAD system, and that user accounts – especially where users had already worked at different Trusts within the consortium – were correctly consolidated.
Towards the later stages of the project, we also had to manage the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. On-site visits were limited, and all our work had to be completed remotely in line with the restrictions in place. Thankfully, our team of highly skilled technicians were on hand, who are dedicated to their work and form the backbone of our operations. Their knowledge, along with the outstanding efforts from the team at Chesterfield Royal Hospital and the support from GE colleagues, allowed for a seamless migration and merge of systems.
When we complete complex work of this nature, we always anticipate follow-on issues and make every effort to minimise disruption as much as possible in the planning stages. The Chesterfield Go-Live went to plan and I am grateful to all involved for supporting and completing such a quality project.
We are proud supporters of EMRAD, and our market leading RIS in now in 11 hospitals, covering more than 5 million patients. I hope Chesterfield and the existing EMRAD Trusts can now reap the benefits of the merge and deliver continued high-quality care to patients.
This article first appeared in the Winter edition of Contrast, published by the East Midlands Imaging Network (EMRAD).
