You’ve probably noted a common theme around many of the IMITS projects in our health organizations: system consolidation. By streamlining the number of systems we’re using in delivering care, we can better support the easy sharing of patient/client information between health care practitioners.

This theme is echoed in the Connecting DI Program. In this project, the effort is focused on the sharing of medical images and reports from x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans, MRIs, and other diagnostic imaging exams that are generated in Health Authority (HA) facilities across the province.

Helping you help your patients

Right now, each HA’s image archiving system is localized, which means health care providers have immediate access to images only if they were taken in their home HA. Image sharing between HA’s does occur, but it’s inconvenient and a bit more time consuming than it could be.

With Connecting DI, a new image archiving system (called the DIR or Diagnostic Imaging Repository) will receive all new images and reports generated by hospitals in every BC Health Authority. These images and reports will then be easily accessible through the physician’s Picturing Imaging and Archiving System (PACS) for viewing.

Once the new DIR is fully operational, any physician following a patient’s progress—say, an oncologist following a patient with long term liver cancer—can easily call up all the relevant images in the DIR related to that patient no matter if the image was taken by the BCCA Centre of the North or at St. Paul’s Hospital.

The ability to seamlessly share images will save time looking for images and reports, reduce the number (and cost) of repeat exams, and ultimately improve the overall patient record.

Direct impact to VCH, PHC, and PHSA

• The PACS in all Lower Mainland and North Coast facilities within our three health organizations will either be upgraded (BC Children’s, BC Women’s, and BCCA Vancouver Centre) or replaced (VCH and PHC sites) with the Philips IntelliSpace system. The upgraded sites were completed in December 2014; the PACS replacements will be done over the coming year.
• The existing image storage and transfer system used primarily by BCCA, called the Bycast Grid, is end of life. Work is currently underway to migrate images off the Grid.

Connecting DI is a joint initiative of IMITS, LM Medical Imaging, the Ministry of Health, and Canada Health Infoway. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Patricia Hamilton, Program Manager, at patricia.hamilton@phsa.ca.