Why Jersey chose BridgeHead’s HealthStore® for its state-of-the-art healthcare vision

The Government of Jersey’s Health and Community Services (HCS) Department, which provides healthcare for over 100,000 Jersey residents, has contracted with BridgeHead Software to implement its HealthStore® solution.

HealthStore is set to underpin the Enterprise Imaging strategy in HCS as part of its overarching aim to become one of the most digitally advanced healthcare systems in the world.

BridgeHead’s Enterprise Imaging expertise will enable Health and Community Services to consolidate, store, protect, and share medical images of all types and formats from across a diverse array of clinical departments. This Enterprise Imaging initiative feeds into the Government of Jersey’s strategic vision to attain the highest level of digital healthcare maturity, EMRAM Stage 7 from HIMSS.

The Government of Jersey Digital Health Vision

The goal of Health and Community Services is to put the individual at the heart of the care process, where data is used intelligently to enhance the care provision for its citizens in both hospital and community environments, encompassing both health and social care.

In order to ensure a system, which is as patient centric as possible, the team from Health and Community Services identified that the ability to secure, access, and analyse all data along the patient journey was essential.

Health and Community Services decided that the starting point was a new generation of image archiving and data management technology – one that is hardware and application independent. This was critical in order to overcome the issues that were being experienced where images were stored on individual departmental systems that could be difficult to protect, manage, and access.

The team from Health and Community Services in Jersey worked with external consultants to conduct an audit and review of the systems it had in place; what changes it would need to make to deliver its vision; and what solution options were available in the marketplace. A set of requirements were agreed that would drive its technology and procurement strategy. These were based on, but not limited to:

·         Improving clinical effectiveness, service levels, and user experience

·         Enhancing the value of the digital care record; and increasing clinician satisfaction

·         Improving workflow efficiency and clinician productivity by streamlining access to, and sharing of, medical images; across departments, but also with external healthcare organisations, where applicable

·         Enabling image access from anywhere to facilitate care provision in the community and solely from the hospital setting.

Paul Morris, Digital Health Programme Manager, in Health and Community Services said: “The HCS team identified a wide range of imaging information that needed to be brought together to provide a true 360-degree patient view. This included images and supporting data from Radiology, Cardiology, Endoscopy, Ophthalmology, Dermatology, Retinal Screening, Dental Clinic, the Diabetes Centre; with integrations to our Electronic Patient Record & Electronic Document Management systems. We needed an imaging platform that offered a central repository where any image, regardless of the source application, could be stored in a standard format, and made available to our healthcare professionals, all accessible using a simple and intuitive user interface.”

Why BridgeHead’s HealthStore Was Chosen

Working with their consultants, the team at Health and Community Services carried out a full assessment of vendors and solutions that were available by way of a Request For Information (RFI) process. Following this exercise, BridgeHead was selected as the only vendor of seven that offered all the features and functionality required for the Enterprise Imaging platform.

After detailed assessment, Health and Community Services opted for BridgeHead over other providers due to the ability for its HealthStore solution to provide a cost effective, independent Enterprise Imaging platform that could manage both DICOM and non-DICOM data. Furthermore, as Health and Community Services has already made significant investments in Microsoft Azure Cloud technology, it was important that the chosen solution could be deployed within their existing Cloud infrastructure. HealthStore offers multiple deployment options, including hosting in the Azure Cloud, which made the solution a great strategic fit.

Michael Chambers, Major Programmes Architect, at Health and Community Services said: “Throughout the selection process, the BridgeHead team were able to demonstrate how HealthStore could aggregate our medical images from across a range of disparate clinical systems, then manage, store, and protect them. Once in HealthStore, those images can be quickly searched and retrieved by our clinicians, as and where they need them, on any authorised device – whether at the hospital or out in the community. And as HealthStore integrates with other primary applications, such as the EPR and PACS; our clinicians can easily access our images, in patient context, all from a single workstation. This gives users one place to go – with just a few clicks, they can get all of the relevant information they need when consulting, diagnosing, or treating a patient.”

Looking To The Future

The HealthStore deployment is scheduled for the back end of the year, and will focus on Radiology in the first instance, before widening the scope to bring medical images into the system from other clinical departments.

Outside of its VNA functionality, HealthStore also offers the ability for healthcare providers to ingest data from other applications. In a future phase, the HCS is keen to explore how BridgeHead can help the States of Jersey to consolidate data from its legacy or replaced applications, allowing those source systems to be retired, whilst making that data part of the patient record. Not only will this reduce the costs and resources associated with licensing and maintaining these legacy applications, but also removes the risks emerging from aging software and hardware that have become key targets for cyberattacks.

Jim Beagle, CEO and President, BridgeHead Software, comments, “we’re delighted to be working with such a visionary, leading healthcare provider in the States of Jersey’s Health and Community Services. The HCS team understand that data is a strategic asset and the lifeblood of quality care delivery. With diagnostic teams relying so heavily on medical imaging, it is vital that clinicians, whether working within a department or part of a multidisciplinary team, have quick and easy access to all of the information they need to make informed care decisions. We are very excited to be part of the HCS’ strategic plans and help it on its digital transformation journey.”

BridgeHead’s HealthStore is already in use in other NHS Trusts, such as Homerton, North Middlesex, Bradford and Gateshead; as well as private healthcare organisations, such as Nuffield Health; where it enables them to efficiently and effectively manage their medical images data, ensuring it is adequately stored, protected, and available, to those that need it, when they need it, at the point of care.