Current Projects
We are currently involved in a variety of projects within the Healthcare sector – providing Consultancy and application development services to NHS Trusts and academic partners to facilitate the translation of medical research into patient care.
One example is the design and implementation of a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 solution to allow secure storage of clinical trials documentation and to allow secure access to this information from either NHS Trust or academic partner. Initially, this system shall be a managed environment with documents created using current working practices and final versions made available via the SharePoint solution.
The next stage is the implementation of document workspaces and associated workflows to facilitate the creation of key project documentation either within an institution or across a range of internal and external partners. This solution shall include full approval and auditing processes to allow versions of documents to be tracked and to ensure that all partners have access to the latest project information.
A second example is using the ‘free’ version of SharePoint that comes with the Microsoft Windows Server range – Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Here, the key requirement is the organisation and security of imaging data – e.g. MRI, Ultrasound, etc – primarily in the DICOM format.
Current working practices are very manual and very time consuming to set up and to administer – taking key personnel away from their intended roles within the organisation and imposing system administrator duties upon them. With this solution, the system shall be capable of reading the data within the DICOM file once the data has been captured on the imaging workstation and automatically feeding this into the correct site collection, complete with appropriate user access permissions.
Anonymised patient data is contained within a single site collection with all visit data held within dedicated document libraries. Research users are then able to access the images, manipulate them and check them back into the system, but always ensuring that the original image is still available.
An example of a non-SharePoint solution is the specification, implementation and management of an image analysis system to support the work of radiographers and researchers. This system implements a multi-layer approach, taking the analysis tools away from the desktop and onto a dedicated analysis server running multiple, discrete virtual machines. This approach allows access to the required analysis tools from any computer on this particular NHS Trust’s network and removes the need to have potentially sensitive data saved to a physical, local machine in order to undertake analysis.
All analysis work, image manipulation and subsequent versioning of the file takes place within this managed environment, ensuring that no patient data is left on the local hard drive of a workstation and hence safeguarding patient confidentiality. The use of discrete virtual machines allows us to control the maximum amount of resources which a particular process can consume, supporting the use of resource intensive applications whilst maintaining a suitable level of service for other system users.
The data is stored within a dedicated storage area network which has been partitioned to also provide hosting services for a local clinical information system as well as file storage capability for other teams within the same unit.
Our database development team are currently putting together a Microsoft Office Access 2007 database to support Scleroderma clinics at a leading NHS Trust. The team are working closely with clinicians and the IT Department to ensure a smooth development and implementation process and hope to have the database completed within two weeks. We are working with the same NHS Trust to implement a data capture system capable of operating across both clinical and research arms of the orgasnisation, supporting innovative research into the causes of a range of conditions and diseases, translating that research back into patient care packages.
Screenshots are available below:
 Sclerdoderma Therapy Screen Example |
 Sclerdoderma Joint Count Example |
 Sclerdoderma Demographics Example
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We hope to produce case studies for you in the coming weeks, but if you have any specific questions then please get in touch.
