The statewide roll out of the Radiology Information Systems and Picture Archiving and Communications System (RIS-PACS) is on track to be operational at 90 hospitals by the end of 2023.
Since its launch in 2020, RIS-PACS has seen the migration of more than 27 million historical images across 46 NSW hospital sites.
Already in 9 local health districts (LHDs) and one speciality health network, a further 2 sites were delivered in April 2023 (Shellharbour and Port Kembla) with Milton, Ulladulla and Wollongong scheduled in the coming months.
What is RIS-PACS?
RIS-PACS stores patient information, digital images and results, providing a centralised solution which is accessible to hospital-based treating teams statewide.
It integrates seamlessly with existing systems, has reduced double handling and the need to manage multiple systems independently when documenting patient care.
Paul Green, District Medical Imaging Manager at Northern NSW LHD, said the RIS-PACS solution has made it easier for NSW Health services to share important information about patients’ health.
Speeding up diagnosis
“This means that doctors can quickly and easily access patient records, which helps speed up the process of diagnosing illnesses,” Mr Green said.
“The broader statewide management of the RIS-PACS solution has avoided unnecessary imaging and works well in conjunction with other healthcare systems used by NSW Health to give doctors a full picture of a patient’s health.”
The ability to look at data and images on the move, particularly on mobile devices for on-call doctors is revolutionary, according to Associate Professor Naren Gunja, Chief Medical Information Officer at Western Sydney LHD.
“You could be an orthopaedic doctor, a plastics doctor, a neurologist, anybody who is on call and needs to see the images remotely,” Associate Professor Gunja said.
“We’ve never had this kind of flexibility with the ability to see everything – the entire domain’s worth of imaging. For clinicians, and especially for mobile clinicians, it’s a game-changer – a new way of working.”
RIS-PACS has vendor-neutral archiving solution design. This means that clinicians can retrieve images no matter what format they are in or which system they came from originally.
Find out more
For more information, please visit the RIS-PACS solutions page.
If you would like to know more, please contact the RIS-PACS team.
The news item above is included in our eHealth NSW July 2023 newsletter.
Download the July 2023 newsletter
