A new pediatric hospital, dedicated to providing children with the best health care possible, opened in 1988 at the Karolinska Hospital, in Stockholm. The Pediatric Radiology Department at Karolinska is famous all over the world for its expertise.
Going film-free is not an objective in itself, but shrinking budgets and growing demands for service mean that something must be done.
In 1997, the Swedish government decided that parents would not be charged for health care services for their children. Naturally, this has put greater pressure on health care providers, as budgets continue to tighten. With Sectra PACS, Karolinska Children's Hospital can meet these greater demands for service without increasing costs.
At Karolinska Children's Hospital, Sectra PACS was designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sectra used the latest technology to achieve maximum uptime and security and built a system that has more protection against failure than any other PACS in the world. This is achieved through the use of high availability clustering techniques in combination with actual mirroring of all image data in two separate computer rooms.
Dr. Lars Johansson, Head of Department of Pediatric Radiology
"The greatest advantage of the Sectra PACS is the instant access to information. At all times, the right image can be displays at the right workstation to the right doctor. This saves time and money. It also gives us and other clinical staff more time to spend with our patients, which is even more important when dealing with children." Lars Johansson, MD Head of Department of Pediatric Radiology,at Karolinska Children's Hospital says.
To minimize the waiting time and - more importantly - the suffering of the child, cooperation between the radiology department and the treating physician is critical.
Sectra PACS makes it possible to significantly decrease the waiting time with the use of web technology, when distributing reports and images at Karolinska Children's Hospital. This technology makes radiology reports and images available to everyone who needs them, free of charge.
One of the cornerstones in a project like this is to train people until they are confident in using the system. The combination of an easy to use system, a well-defined training program and onsite support during the installation phase are key features in a successful project such as this one.
