RUH Patients Amongst First to Benefit from New Carestream Ultrasound Technology

HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, November 17—The Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust (RUH) has installed a new CARESTREAM Touch Prime XE Ultrasound system in its Radiology department—one of the first facilities in the UK to do so. The new equipment is being used to carry out a wide variety of examinations, including obstetrics and gynaecology, general abdominal and musculoskeletal imaging. It will help RUH in its mission to continually improve quality and standards for the 500,000 people it serves from its site near Bath city centre.

Developed using recommendations from sonographers and ultrasound professionals from around the world, a key feature of the Touch Prime Ultrasound System is its sealed, all-touch control panel. This combines the speed and flexibility of a soft user interface with the tactile feedback of traditional keys. As well as being configurable and comfortable to use, the panels are designed to be easy to clean, helping hospital administrators to support Healthcare-Associated Infection (HAI) and other infection-control initiatives. According to Tracey Blacker, Lead Ultrasonographer at RUH, ‘The new equipment has the feel of good quality workmanship. The touchscreen is hygienic with large screen demographics, which means there are no buttons to come loose, or to be stuck down with gel.’ RUH also appreciates the new system’s lightness and manoeuvrability: ’Staff love the ability to move the control panel laterally, which improves the ergonomics, especially when scanning large immobile patients,’ adds Tracey.

The Touch Prime also offers outstanding image quality, allowing sonographers and clinicians to better visualise small structures as well as contrast differences in tissue for radiology, OB/GYN, musculoskeletal and vascular applications. ‘The new technology creates a processed image,’ says Tracey, ‘and the penetration and resolution of the image is excellent. More importantly the diagnostic artefacts are still obvious, and have not been lost in the processing, allowing staff to feel confident with the diagnostic quality of the image. The probes are all multi-frequency, with a wide range of frequencies, reducing the need for numerous probes. The scanning parameters are easily accessed on the touch screen, and can be customised and saved.’

With multiple user settings possible, the Touch Prime's display can be ‘personalised’, including to limit what is displayed and simplify the system for Trainees and Junior Doctors. ‘Changing users’ pre-sets is really easy and can be achieved during an examination with no loss of information, via the ID reader’ says Tracey.

The system has also been easy to switch to: ‘From patient search to reviewing and deleting images, it is very intuitive to use. Setting up was very easy, partly due to the Carestream staff on site during installation, but also because Carestream knew how it wanted to set the unit up and took into consideration our needs as a customer’ Tracey concludes.

Back row (L-R): Sarah Wilmott, Elena Williams, Jenny De Koning, Dan Bath, Chris Weeks, Tracey Blacker (Lead Sonographer), Catherine Elmes, Neha Parekh (Carestream Applications) and Tim Kilby (Carestream Key Account Manager), Front row: Pam Norbury (Lead Sonographer) and Elisa Woodward