Australian Cancer Centre Improves Quality of Patient Care & Productivity
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Carestream’s Clinical Collaboration Platform supports high volume and workflow efficiencies critical to cancer patient care.
By Peter Buchanan, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is one of the world’s leading cancer research, education, and treatment centres. We strive to provide world-class patient care. Carestream’s Clinical Collaboration Platform is helping us achieve our goal by increasing collaboration and efficiency which in turn improve the timeliness of patient management decisions by treating clinicians.
My colleague, Dr. Kwang Chin, Peter MacCallum’s Head of Interventional Radiology, Deputy Director, Radiology, reports that, “The functionality and speed of Carestream’s Platform has improved the collaboration and efficiency of multi-disciplinary meetings where decisions regarding patient treatment paths are made.”
Our centres perform approximately 60,000 examinations per year across every imaging modality, and this number continues to grow. With such a world-class level of healthcare service, we require equipment that ensures the most efficient reporting and turnaround times for patient imaging.
Increasing radiologist throughput and reporting
Since the implementation of Carestream Vue PACS, average report turnaround times have improved from over 36 hours to around 12 hours.
Dr. Chin says that, “since the implementation of Carestream Vue PACS, greater radiologist throughput has been achieved. The throughput and report turnaround time have led to more timely report availability, improving the timeliness of patient management decisions by treating clinicians.”
Another positive outcome of the Carestream Vue PACS and its Diagnostic Viewer: we have more efficient multi-modality and multi-time point comparisons through Carestream’s Lesion Management functionality. In addition to Lesion Management, the viewer has other native clinical applications including Advanced 3D Package, PET-CT, Mammography, and Digital Breast Tomosynthesis that help improve productivity and diagnostic quality.
Achieving interoperability among multiple locations
Prior to partnering with Carestream, Peter MacCallum’s legacy PACS was at end of life and in need of an upgrade. We decided to go to the market and seek the best PACS/VNA that would serve us well in the medium- to long-term future.
Additionally, the relocation of Peter Mac to a new facility in a precinct with the Royal Women’s and Royal Melbourne Hospitals was a strong influence on our PACS decision. The three organisations will be working closely together. Interoperability and sharing of image data will be crucial to success.
The Centre selected and implemented Vue PACS and Vue Archive as part of Carestream Health’s Clinical Collaboration Platform. The one Unified Core backend maximises performance while streamlining system administration and reducing cost.
Combining PACS and VNA to deliver high volume and improved workflow
The combination of Carestream’s PACS and repository that can handle high volume while providing workflow efficiencies was another important factor in our selection.
Dr. Chin emphasizes that “Imaging of cancer provides unique challenges in that multi-modality, multi-time point comparison of studies is required to adequately assess response to treatment. Since this is the vast majority of Peter Mac’s work, as opposed to relatively simple single exams as in general radiology, a PACS and repository that could handle high volume while providing workflow efficiencies was a key factor. Carestream’s Platform was judged to be the best by our functional evaluation team. The local support they provide and the competitive pricing structure were also important.”
Through the use of Vue Archive, which acts as a Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA), we have gained the ability to separate image storage from image viewing. This ability to future-proof our image repository was another important reason that we selected Carestream Health.
Vue Archive also acts as a VNA to store and manage data from third-party software. This is important as Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre has very specific requirements for data from Molecular Imaging and Radiotherapy Planning. Already, Carestream has been able to seamlessly integrate a third-party data source (MIM Vista) for Molecular Imaging into the enterprise VNA. The ability to archive beyond traditional radiology images has proved to be an excellent solution for the Department. Now, the organization is considering adding other image data sets to further leverage the investment made in the current VNA.
Carestream’s Clinical Collaboration Platform has been implemented and functioning at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre since April 2016. We have found Carestream to be a responsive vendor thus far and are very happy with the general performance of the product.
Learn more about Carestream’s Clinical Collaboration Platform!
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Peter Buchanan is Director of Operations Radiation Oncology & Cancer Imaging at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. The Centre is one of the world’s leading cancer research, education and treatment centres. It is Australia’s only public hospital solely dedicated to caring for people affected by cancer. Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre has over 2,500 staff, including more than 580 laboratory and clinical researchers, all focused on providing better treatments, better care and potential cures for cancer.
