North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust

Problem Solved

With ambitions to offer a fully operational digital campus, North Middlesex quickly recognised they needed to take a strategic approach to their data management. Their long-term vision is to make all data available to those that need it when they need it.

One of their first initiatives towards this goal was to introduce BridgeHead’s independent clinical archive (ICA), HealthStore®, also known as a next generation VNA. HealthStore is now being used to migrate radiology data out of the central data stores (provided by the National PACS Contracts), transforming it so that it is open and compliant (and thus more easily shared across the Trust), as well as acting as the repository for its new radiology images created via their new Sectra PACS. In addition, the ICA would also be host to the data from hospital’s electronic document management system – ensuring it was adequately stored and protected.

With a centralised, strategic approach to data management, in conjunction with other technology solutions, North Middlesex aims to deliver on the Better Care Fund plan and to achieve Jeremy Hunt’s vision of a ‘digital hospital’ 1 to 2 years earlier than required.

Why BridgeHead?

  • Excellent reputation and healthcare experience, successfully deploying data management solutions across the NHS
  • Best-of-breed independent clinical archive (a.k.a. the next generation VNA)
  • Commitment to open standards enabling easier future data migrations & ensuring interoperability
  • Scalable & vendor agnostic – futureproofing their environment so as to work with any future applications or storage
North-Middlesex-Customer-Picture

Hospital Profile

  • One of London’s busiest acute hospitals
  • 2,800 staff, 420+ beds, serving over 350,000 people
  • Specialisms in strokes, HIV/AIDS, cardiology, haematology, diabetes, sleep studies, orthopaedics, fertility, sickle cell & thalassaemia
  • Aspires to become an NHS Foundation Trust
  • EDM – Fortress
  • PACS – Sectra
  • Storage – Dell
  • Now using BridgeHead’s ICA – HealthStore® for radiology & EDM data
North-Middlesex-University-Hospital-NHS-Trust-Logo
“The ability that HealthStore® brings to manage radiology data, as well as other relevant information across all platforms, will benefit clinicians and patients alike. Previously, patient data was stored locally to departmental machines all requiring different passwords to allow access. Now, with the correct identity policies in place, clinicians can recall all information pertinent to the patient. It is much faster and, therefore, provides greater efficiency and better levels of patient care.”
Peter Hales,

RIS & PACS Manager, North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust

“Our VNA approach has the capability to push data from source to the applications and/or individuals that need it, when they need it. For us, it makes absolute sense to use our VNA alongside our EDMS. BridgeHead has excellent clinical and healthcare experience and demonstrated the applicability of their next generation VNA, HealthStore®, to this. For applications like EDMS that include patient history, notes, diagnostics and more it is paramount that patient information is available at all times.”
Musadiq Subar

IT Programme Manager and Clinical Technical Architect, North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust

“Initially, we just wanted a VNA for PACS; but the hospital was going through a transformation programme looking at how we use data and who requires access to that data. The ending of our PACS LSP presented us with an opportunity to rethink our data management strategy; and consider a VNA independent from PACS and RIS that was truly application agnostic and could scale across the hospital to manage all data types, not just medical images.”
Eddie Webb

Head of IT, North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust

You may also be interested in:

DigitalHealth.net - Bradford migrates data to BridgeHead VNA

The publication (known for years as eHealth Insider) reports on Bradford Teaching Hospitals’ strategic approach to data management, utilizing BridgeHead’s VNA, HealthStore® →

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Bradford NHS deployed an independent VNA, on their way out of the PACS Contracts, realising their vision of a Single Patient Record →

Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust

Gateshead localised and moved their PACS images from Accenture CDS into BridgeHead HealthStore converting them from proprietary to vendor neutral format →

Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Find out why this London-based Trust implemented BridgeHead VNA ahead of replacing its PACS system embracing a comprehensive image management strategy →
Discover how BridgeHead Software can help. Contact us and we’d be delighted to share some ideas.

Get In Touch